


Temporary Hold

by standalone



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Race Changes, F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship (sort of), Libraries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 20:19:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9458891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standalone/pseuds/standalone
Summary: Some people just don’t function well when they’re single. And with college graduation a scant month away, Cosette could really use some functionality.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vito](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vito/gifts).



> Enormous thanks to [werebear](http://archiveofourown.org/users/werebear/profile) for such a lot of reads and lovely conversations about why the story is better if we understand why the characters feel what they feel. Where would this be without you?
> 
> Thanks to [violetbronte](http://archiveofourown.org/users/violetbronte/profile) for some valuable library insights, and to M for the title.
> 
> And, no thanks here, but the tequila shots are definitely [Vito](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Vito/profile)'s fault.

**Chapter 1: Cosette**

“Hey there,” Cosette practices as she pedals hard against the evening wind. It’s Friday afternoon, but campus is packed with clusters of students practicing skate tricks, playing hackey sack, studying at outdoor tables, and lying out on the grass to catch some rays from the still-high sun. “Hey, I know we don’t always get along, but I have a proposition for you.”

Another bicyclist headed her way overhears her. 

“You can proposition me any time, bae.”

“No thanks,” she says, and pedals harder, ditching him.

Muttering to herself now, she says, “I have a proposition to make. Hear me out. We don’t really know each other, and you maybe hate me, but I saw how you looked at me at the party last week.” 

*

_Jehan had been spinning records—an eclectic mix that bounced from Nicki to The Smiths to a speech from Aung San Suu Kyi superimposed over a throbbing tech house beat, and this last slid into big gloppy swooping thumps that sounded like pure sex, and by that point literally everyone was dancing. The crowd spilled out of the garage and driveway out into the street, which was a little risky because once you hit the sidewalk your plastic cup of beer became an Open Container violation, but there were no cops in sight and anyway Cosette was up front, close enough that she could see the sweat on Jehan’s forehead as Jehan bopped to the beat above her on the house’s little balcony._

_Cosette had been dancing with friends up till that point, keeping it tame and fun, but when the music switched, so did the mood. Floréal had winked at her and turned away to grind on a pretty girl with a diamond nose-ring and Musichetta had pushed off into the crowd to find one of her guys. This was to be expected. Cosette had grinned, drained the warm beer in her cup, and looked up at the cloudy night sky overhead. It felt good to be packed in by warm bodies with the night air off the ocean cool around her. The beat vibrated through her sneakers on the concrete, up through the lazy, drunk muscles of her body, and through her core and arms._

_Someone behind her placed a tentative hand on her hip, and yes, Cosette wanted that. She wanted to be touched. She danced back against the person and felt a gratifying tightening of the hand at her hip._

_It had been so long since she’d been able to embrace the anonymity of night and sound, since she’d been able to neglect appearances for a few precious minutes, since she’d rubbed her ass against a stranger in a pulsating crowd and felt him go hard against her. She ground back on this guy till he had both hands on her hips and was unabashedly thrusting against her jeans, and she smiled up at the grey sky and at Jehan, who was sneaking a quick kiss to Courfeyrac while queueing up his next song, and at the other front-facing windows of Amis House, where a smattering of her friends looked down at the crowd._

_There was Grantaire, gesticulating, and Bossuet, sitting precariously half-in half-out an open window, and Bahorel taking a shot with one hand while restraining Bossuet with the other. And there, too, was Éponine, and strangely, when Cosette looked at her, she found that Éponine’s dark eyes were already looking in her direction. The look was heavy and critical._ Back to your old ways, Fauchelevent? The second you ditch Marius, you’re a fucking freshman again? 

_Cosette looked back steadily. Éponine had never approved of Cosette seeing Marius in the first place. She’d wanted them to break up, so now that they had, what the heck right did she have to criticize Cosette for living like a single person again? Éponine had glared down. Framed by choppy, long black hair, her lined eyes ripped into her._

_Combined with the hard dick at Cosette’s back and the fuck-me rhythm pulsing through the crowd, something about that ruthless face sparked a tremor inside her._ Well, why not? _she asked herself, and, yes, in the hard-packed throng, bodies pressed against her from every side. A smile at the similarly-gyrating pair of strangers inches in front of her was all it took to draw them flush against her, and then she was sandwiched between one of them—a large and graceful woman who winked at Cosette as she let her leg breach the space between Cosette’s, then craned her neck to make out very tenderly with her own dance partner—and the other stranger at her back. The woman was moaning into her partner’s mouth, and with each thud of the beat, her thigh slid insistently against the seams of Cosette’s jeans._

_Up in the window, her friends seemed oblivious. Almost. All except Éponine. The man behind Cosette panted in her ear. The woman in front of her took Cosette by the hip then and dragged her closer still, so their fronts merged, breasts and bellies and legs inseparable but moving, and Cosette was not going to waste this chance. Eyes glued to Éponine, with a cock nudging her ass and a firm thigh between her own, she let herself grind on these anonymous bodies, controlled and controlling._

_She_ did _feel like a freshman again. She remembered this ridiculous freedom. She remembered the astonishment at how easy it was to take her pleasure and to move on. In this crowd, she was not Cosette Fauchelevent. She wasn’t good; she wasn’t bad; she wasn’t a Regents’ Scholar or a champion swimmer or a dependable daughter or anything else. She was a human, in a mess of other sweaty humans, seeking momentary satisfaction._

Fuck you, _she thought as she came. She was looking at Éponine, but the thought was almost directionless._ Fuck you, universe, for telling me I don’t get to have this. Fuck you, Marius, for trying to own me. I’m no one’s goddamn property but my own. 

_She let her eyes close and leaned back. Then the throb bled out of the music and as Jehan transitioned into a classic Fela number, Cosette patted a fond farewell to the strong hands on her hips and slipped away from the faceless dance partner to disappear into the mass of bodies._

*

The bike path splits. Cosette takes the right-hand fork, which heads away from the bluffs and toward the little college town. “And look,” she continues aloud to herself, “it’s been a really hard couple months. It was weird before we broke up, and honestly, weirder _after_ we broke up, until he went to Paris. I just was used to being in a relationship, you know?”

It hadn’t been good for her. For either of them. She sees that now. But it was so reassuring to know he’d be there waiting for her on her apartment couch in the evenings, irritating Floréal and Leticia with his ponderously reliable presence. Having a boyfriend had satisfied a need she hadn’t known she had; it had weeded acres of her brain clear for research and study; in the library carrels or lectures or lab sessions, she didn’t waste her time daydreaming about when and how she’d get fucked next, because she knew: she’d get fucked that night, if she wanted to, on that terrible squashy sofa-bed in her apartment living room (unless Floréal was sleeping away that night in which case she and Marius would fuck in Cosette’s bunk of their shared bed) or in his room at Amis House if Courf was out, and he would conscientiously (all right, she’ll say it: _obsessively_ ) make sure that she fell asleep fulfilled.

He had just assumed she’d move to France with him after her graduation—tag along and play tourist, then housewife, while he took over the family business. He had just assumed she’d be happy to base her identity around him. 

Thank god their friends had convinced him, after the break-up, to move on with his plans, not to linger in hopeless wait. Thank god she could visit Amis House without dread of his mournful eyes. 

With him gone, she should feel free. But instead she feels itchy, like there’s a constant need just below her skin. She can’t stop ogling people. She notices whispers, smells the sweet musk of classmates’ sweat, hears innuendoes on the breeze. Her mind wanders in lecture. 

This Monday, when Floréal came home to find Cosette staring vacantly at the kitchen ceiling while a pot of rice bubbled over on the stove and her forgotten pen leaked blotches of ink onto her Env Chem notes, she got a stern talking-to. 

“I really hate to say it,” Floréal said, “but, _m’ija_ , you need someone to date.”

Cosette gave her a dazed double-take. “Are you telling me I need to get fucked?”

“Nah. Well, _yeah?_ , but like, on the regular.”

“You hate when I’m seeing someone.”

“Not true. I hate it when you’re seeing a boyfriend who acts like you’re useless.”

“He didn’t...” The half-formed protestation didn’t really want to leave her mouth.

“But more than that, I hate it when you actually _are_ useless. We’re supposed to graduate in five weeks.”

Cosette let her head fall onto the besmirched Chem notes. 

“I got a D on my last Soils test,” she confessed in a moan.

“You told me, _cariño_. You’re fucking up right and left. That’s why you got to do something about it.” 

Cosette sat up and studied her roommate for a moment. Flor, wiping down the stove, looked unnaturally sincere. “You really think dating will solve things?”

“Maybe? If you do it right. It doesn’t have to be serious, does it? Just someone you can smooch on and cuddle till finals are over? I’d volunteer, but I don’t want you to dump me at graduation.” Holding a dramatic hand to her heart, Floréal said, “I couldn’t bear it.” She handed Cosette a wet dishtowel. “Here, you’re all blue. There’s ink on your forehead.”

*

Over the next few days, Cosette’s attention did not improve. She took notes in class and participated with marginal focus in labs, but her mind was otherwise occupied with the search for temporary love.

 _Just till finals are over_ , Floréal had said. On a fresh page of her lab book, Cosette started a list.

**Requirements:**

**Love me**

**Till graduation**

**Then let me go**

It seemed pretty straightforward. Below it, she started a second list.

**Prospects:**

Courfeyrac: _\+ Game for anything / - Flighty, would def sleep around_

Bahorel: + _Built af, would gladly take to bed / - Supposedly seeing someone?_

Musichetta: + _Known great kisser / - Am not down to be fourth wheel_

Éponine: _\+ Stunning, gives zero shits, maybe sees into my soul? / - Terrifying, prob taken_

Combeferre: + _So smart, compassionate /_ \- _Am looking for bedmate, not therapist_

This last was a definite dealbreaker. She struck ‘Ferre from the list immediately. 

Courfeyrac was next to go. Courf had basically been Marius’s brother the last few years, and while it was doubtful that that would in any way hinder his willingness to get with Cosette, Cosette was looking for _commitment_.

 _Temporary commitment_ , she corrected herself. Commitment with a termination date. 

Joly and Bossuet and Musichetta would, she was certain, welcome her generously into their plural love, but it just seemed complicated to enter an existing relationship. And honestly, while she had made out with ‘Chetta a handful of times freshman year and would gladly suck every tart word from those honeyed lips, she wasn’t really into the guys that much. They were her pals. The thought of kissing either of them—let alone anything more—made her skin crawl.

She slipped out her phone and sent a quick text.

_**R, can I ask something in confidence?** _

Grantaire, who was exclusively taking studio art courses this year, could be counted on for a quick reply. Her phone vibrated before she even got it back in her pocket: _shoot_

_**Are Bahorel and Éponine seeing anyone?** _

_you mean are they single :) ?_

_**Yes** _

_depends whos asking_

_**I’m asking** _

_right but why_

_**Because I’m looking for a date?** _

_fine don’t tell me_

_**R** _

**_R!_ **

**_RRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!_ **

_oy. B has gf in LA, serious, he’s moving there after grad. E’s always single on the outside_

_**What does that mean?**_ Cosette texted back, then crossed out Bahorel.

_means set her up at yr peril_

_**Not trying to set her up** _

_then why you want to know?_

_**I already said** _

_okay fine whatever_

_whatever yr doin be cool to her fauchelevent_

_**Thx, R** _

Éponine. The last name on the list. Cosette stared at it for a moment, then circled the name a few times.

She and Éponine had never been friends. From their first meeting in the dorm bathrooms freshman year, Éponine’s scorn for her could have sunk ships. Like most of the other first-year girls lined up in their fluffy robes in front of the mirrors, Cosette had been carrying a cute, color-matching shower caddy full of fancy bottles and tubes and brushes; taking the next sink over, Éponine had yanked a toothbrush and toothpaste from the back pocket of her shredded jeans and nodded a curt greeting, then ignored her entirely. Cosette had been in the middle of brushing her own teeth and didn’t say hi.

They hadn’t actually spoken until a month or so later, when Cosette stumbled back from her inaugural frat party, drunk for the first time and directionless, having left alone when her roommate ditched her for a hot guy. 

Cosette hadn’t brought her keys. Éponine had found her fumbling with the locked door to her room. “Locked out?” 

“Yeah, my Jenny has the rooms ... I mean the keys ... to our room ... Jenny has ‘em.” She jiggled the handle again, slumping against the door and chuckling. “This is my room.” She had noticed that the girl with the angry hair had drawn near and was glowering at her. “Wait ... my room, right?” She gestured at the photos on the heavy wood door, which were unmistakably her and Jenny, sassy juts and angles in cute going-out dresses. The movement made her sway.

“Christ,” the other girl said, pushing her aside. She looked up and down the empty hallway, then dug in her pockets till she came out with a pocketknife. Cosette tried to watch, but her head was swimming. In like three seconds, Éponine had the door open. 

“Ohmygod _thank you_ amazing you’re like a robber cat—” Cosette said, and then took a step into her room and tumbled to the ground. The room spun around her and made her stomach feel like she was riding the Tilt-A-Whirl, and god, that never ever ended well...

“Christ alive,” the girl said again, jamming a wastebasket into Cosette’s hands. “Puke in here, okay?”

The girl had stayed with her through hours of vomiting and tears. She’d listened to Cosette babble about her major and her new friends and how hard it was to be here, for the first time in a decade separated by hundreds of miles from her dad—and then tolerated another bout of sobs as it dawned on Cosette how disappointed her father would be to see her in this state. 

Cosette didn’t remember falling asleep, but she woke up in her bed, with a full water bottle and a couple of ibuprofen set out on her bedstand next to a note that said _**Take the drugs. Drink the water. Next time, you bring a posse. Never leave without them. Bad things happen. Éponine**_

Cosette had taken the note to heart. After that, she never went out without a group of friends, and they always walked (or staggered) home together. Every now and then that year, she’d see Éponine around the hall or, rarely, out at parties, but Éponine bristled when she tried to approach. Éponine herself didn’t seem to go out with a posse, but Cosette was fairly certain she went out with a knife.

Then the next year, her new off-campus roommate Floréal took her to drinks at her friend Grantaire’s place, and Grantaire’s best friend showed up and something in Cosette’s chest hiccuped with recognition of _Bad Things Happen Éponine_. “I never thanked you,” Cosette tried to say that time, and Éponine had laughed a gravelly laugh and said, “You didn’t hurl on me, so I’ll call it good enough.” 

Éponine started to treat her like they had history, and Cosette had thought they might actually get along. Then, though, they both got involved with the ABC, and Cosette started seeing Marius, and Éponine slunk away whenever Cosette came close. Cosette felt terrible. She hadn’t known. How could she have? But would it have changed anything? She saw splendors in Marius. She had explored the pleasures of the flesh with plenty of people during her freshman year of freedom, but Marius was different. He was her first love. Knowing about Éponine’s love for him wouldn’t have held her back.

Shit.

Cosette looked at the list in front of her—the list, now, of a single name.

Éponine: _\+ Stunning, gives zero shits, maybe sees into my soul? / - Terrifying, ~~prob taken~~_

She added a new negative: _Hates me._

But. There was that one time last December. She and Marius had been arguing in his room upstairs in Amis House about whether it was disrespectful to Marius for her to go out dancing with friends when he had already said he was staying in, and Cosette had gotten reckless and yelled, “I am going to do what I fucking _want_ , Marius, I am not your property.”

Storming down the stairway, she had run into Éponine, who must have heard—everyone in the house must have heard their fights that winter—and who had stuck out a hand to keep her from falling. Looking Cosette squarely in the eye, she had frowned just a little, then given a decisive nod. It looked like approval.

She hadn’t known till then how much she wanted this girl’s approval.

That nod had helped tip the scales. Every time she thought of it, she shivered a little. It was like Bad Things Happen Éponine thought Cosette might actually do something right for once. And while that something right might mean leaving Marius, it felt like Éponine was on _her_ side. 

She looked at the list again. She had just last week rubbed one out, in public, while watching Éponine glare at her. All this had to count for something. To Éponine’s name, she appended one last note: _Makes me feel things._

*

The sea breeze is stiffer here in town than it is on campus; Cosette’s clothes whip against her body as she presses forward into the wind. The little college town zips by—a few blocks of hippie grocery co-ops, pizza shops, taquerias, and liquor stores, followed by long straight roads of dilapidated student housing. 

Amis House is just a few blocks further from campus. She’s there in no time, locking her bike to the rack in their driveway before she’s totally sure what she’s even going to say.

“Hey,” she mutters to herself again as she pretends to fiddle with her bike lock. “I know we don’t always get along very well, and it’s been extra weird this year, but—”

“Don’t bother, Fauche!” A raspy voice from above; someone’s seen her from the little balcony above the driveway. “No one’s here. Everyone went to the protest.”

Fuck. 

Cosette squints up at the balcony, but the voice is obviously Éponine’s.

“Yeah, I actually was hoping...” she starts, and falters. “Can I come up?”

Éponine shrugs. “Guess so.”

If you sit just right on the balcony at Amis House, and peek in between a couple of monstrous old 1960s-era lowrises, you can see a sliver of the Pacific Ocean. Éponine, dressed in typical jeans and A-shirt, is sitting in that spot right now and holding an open book and pencil. Next to her, half a dozen other books flap in the wind to reveal scrawled annotations.

Éponine doesn’t budge, so Cosette hovers awkwardly beside her for a minute. She envisioned this conversation standing face-to-face, but maybe that’s not how it gets to go. She drags a backless plastic chair over and sits beside Éponine.

“You looking for _me_?” Éponine asks after a minute.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Why?” Éponine’s voice is rough and cagey. She sounds like a tiger that scents prey.

“Because well, we don’t always get along very well, and I know you’re busy, and I’m busy, and everything with Marius got all weird and I’m pretty sure you’re single and—”

“What do you _want_ , Fauchelevent?” Cosette risks looking at her, and Éponine’s not staring at the water anymore. Her dark brown eyes gleam under the shag of black bangs; the longer parts of her hair drag across the lean brown of her neck and shoulders where they’re bare. Any plan Cosette has vanishes.

“I want you to be my girlfriend,” she blurts out. “Not for that long. Just till we graduate. ‘Cause I’m a mess and Flor says it’s cause I don’t know how to be single, and I think you’re in the right zone of _I know you enough but not too much_ , and I think it could be cool and there wouldn’t be any hard feelings when we end it, you know?”

“Holy fuck,” Éponine says, tilting her head back and smiling a small, vicious smile that makes Cosette squirm. The unease wriggles from her chest to her guts to her junk, and wow, she did not expect that squirming to be something she would really really like. She feels the color rising in her cheeks. “Are you asking me out, Fauche?”

“Yes, but... well ... _No._ I don’t want to, like, go on dates with you. People go on dates to get to know each other so they can decide whether they’re going to be a couple or whatever. I want to skip that. I want to _be dating_ you, for you to be my girlfriend, full-on, no holds barred, from now till graduation. Then I move back home, and you do whatever you do and it’s just done, that easy.”

“That easy,” Éponine repeats doubtfully, and her growing smile makes Cosette blush harder; she feels like a stupid child, and god, she really can’t understand what about that is so damn appealing to her. Humiliation usually just feels humiliating. “So, to clarify, you are asking me to be your girlfriend, whatever the shit you think that means, for the next month?”

“Yes!” Cosette says, relieved. It’s simple, really.

But apparently that’s not the end of the clarification. “And _why_?”

“Because I can’t focus. I’m falling behind in classes, I’m constantly distracted, I’m making out with strangers like a freshman.” She feels the blush heat up further, remembering Éponine’s gaze at the party the other night.

Close now, those eyes pierce her. “And dating me solves this?”

“I think just _dating_ solves this. Having someone to, you know, come home to and call and all that. Not feeling that void where a person should be.”

Éponine nods bitterly. “Half my life is voids. What’s in this for me?”

How has Cosette not asked herself this question? How cocksure of her to assume that being her girlfriend would be its own reward. What, indeed, can she offer to Éponine, a woman who seemingly wants for nothing?

Cosette knows herself to be quite pretty, if in a plain, not particularly notable way. She’s smart with numbers and logic, but not creative. She frequently finds herself to be the canvas on which others delight in painting their desires; over her college career, she’s received more than a few professions of undying love from bare acquaintances convinced that she represented their romantic ideal.

“Oh shit,” she says, embarrassed, and Éponine’s smile lets slip a crackle of laughter. “I’m... Well, I’m a pretty good girlfriend. I’ll check up on you a lot and bring you treats, and I cuddle like no one’s business, and I think I’m a decent fuck.”

At this, Éponine’s book clumps to the floor of the balcony. She crosses her skinny arms over her chest.

“Hold up. Now you’re saying you want me to _fuck_ you?”

“I’m saying I want you to be my real girlfriend,” Cosette cries out, frustrated. “Not like a new relationship where we’re just figuring things out. I want to jump into month 13, where we already know everything about each other and we know each other’s friends and we don’t worry about whether we can text at three in the morning, and yes, we _have_ been having sex for a long time and we know how to make each other happy. Because if it’s only going to last for a month, I want to skip all the crap.”

“So you want a fake real girlfriend for a little while.”

“Can we just call it _real_?”

“Real relationships don’t stop on June 16.”

“Some do.”

“You know what I mean. They don’t have a fucking end date.”

Cosette shrugs. “I find timelines soothing.”

“And why me?”

“I already _said_. We know each other’s people, so that saves us time, and you kind of hate me, so breaking up will be easy. In the meantime, I think you’re hot and you don’t really talk to me but everyone you _do_ talk to seems to like you so you probably have a personality somewhere, and I really think we’d both have a good time.” _Maybe you’ll hate me less_ , she thinks. _Maybe you’ll remember me as a weird fling and not as the weasel who stole your true love’s heart away and turned him into a controlling asshat._

“Hmm.” Éponine gets a faraway look in her eyes while she studies the ocean. Cosette’s insides turn over. Is she considering it? “What would we tell everyone?” 

“About us dating? Whatever you wanted. Tell the truth? Make something up?”

“What if I wanted to say, _Cosette’s gone batshit crazy and decided I’m her girlfriend_.”

“That’s perfect!” Cosette grins. “Everyone would play along. Maybe say I’m emotionally fragile?”

“But they’d all think you were a lunatic.”

“So?” The sun’s slow descent brings it into the gap between the two buildings across the way, and in averting their eyes from the sudden glare, the two women turn to face each other again.

“What would this look like?” Éponine asks. “Like, just doing what we’re doing now. If I was your girlfriend?”

“Well,” Cosette says, and this is the part she’s thought about the most—not the words, but the movements, the fluid motions required to make intimacy seem practiced and routine, “I’d probably be touching you most of the time.” She slips a hand up the back of Éponine’s chair and rests her hand with familiar weight on Éponine’s exposed shoulder. Éponine seems to be struggling not to stiffen under Cosette’s touch. She presses gently with the fingers, like one kneads lightly at tension in the shoulders of a person one loves. “I like to touch people.” She leans a little closer, not touching her head to Éponine but entering her space. “I’d get close. Sometimes if I felt like it, I’d kiss you.” Éponine’s eyes flicker darkly at that, and it doesn’t seem entirely forbidding, so Cosette chances a quick kiss to Éponine’s cheekbone. “And if we were all alone, like now, well, I might touch you other places too. But only if you—”

“If you’re trying to be my real girlfriend, you better give me a real kiss,” Éponine interrupts, and pulls Cosette in. 

Éponine is thin verging on scrawny, but wow, is she strong. She has hands in Cosette’s hair and thin lips sliding open under Cosette’s, and her mouth tastes like a bittersweet memory of lemons, and god, they’re both gasping against each other, pressing in for more, and Cosette is feeling quite smug about this choice.

Then Éponine draws back. She shakes her head to settle her choppy hair back behind her shoulders.

“Okay, I’ll think it over. When do you need an answer?”

 _Now_ , Cosette thinks. “As soon as is convenient?”

“You got it. See ya.”

And before a gaping Cosette has even exited the balcony, Éponine’s picked up her book and is reading again as if nothing happened.

  


**Chapter 2: Cosette**

At three a.m., Cosette wakes up to a very confusing text.

_hey gf, whatcha doin?_

It takes a good long while for her to figure out what’s going on, but once she does, her heart lurches. Maybe the late-night text offer was what sold the deal.

 _ **Sleeping**_ , she texts back. _**You?**_

_can’t sleep till I finish Ulysses_

In the bottom bunk, Floréal is groaning about all the texting sounds. Cosette bundles herself in a blanket and slides out to the living room. She’s heard of _Ulysses,_ she’s sure, but can’t remember what. She looks it up on her phone. Oh, crikey, that thing is huge. She reads a preview page. And impenetrable.

She takes a deep breath. Girlfriend. 

_**Oh, babe, I’m sorry. You close?** _

_bout 100 pages to go_

_**Anything I can do to help?** _

_wake me up by noon so I stay on target with my grad thesis_

_**Of course** _

_thanks_

_go back to sleep_

*

For all the times Cosette’s stayed in Amis House, she’s never been in Éponine’s room. The room that had been Marius and Courfeyrac’s—just Courf’s now since Marius moved to France—is at one end of the second floor hallway, and Éponine’s is at the other, nearest the staircase and the strange little balcony that overlooks the driveway. In between, there are several other bedrooms and a bathroom; upstairs, on the half-sized top floor, are the rooms shared by Enjolras and Combeferre and by Musichetta, Joly, and Bossuet.

Cosette’s fingers hesitate on the knob, then turn gently till the latch clicks and the door swings inward. Éponine’s room used to be the laundry room long ago, before the laundry machines moved to the garage. Her room’s only like 50 square feet, but it boasts a full-sized futon, a cast-iron laundry sink, and a little window over her dresser, which seems to do double-duty as a desk if the heaped laptop and books are any indication.

Sprawled under a sheet on the open futon, Éponine appears utterly unaware of Cosette’s entrance into the room. She’s breathing softly in her sleep, and she seems unusually gentle like this. Having closed the door quietly behind her, Cosette pauses in the dim light of the single shaded window.

Her instinct is to wake her like she wakes up Floréal—first with a warning, then a shake, then bright lights and booms. But that is definitely not going to set the right tone for this relationship.

 _You’re her girlfriend_ , she reminds herself. Slipping off her shoes, Cosette slides into the bed beside Éponine. She runs a finger along the sharp line of Éponine’s jaw, then—she’s done it once before; _why not?_ —kisses it. Taut as it looks over those hard bones, the skin is soft and warm. She kisses Éponine’s cheek, then her nose, then the exposed skin behind her ear. The kisses feel clandestine, transgressive, unsettling, since they trigger no response. Eventually, Éponine wiggles away from her, rolling back toward sleep.

It’s not a promising start. Cosette grabs hold of her shoulder to pull her back and prevent her cocooning into herself.

“Go’way,” Éponine mutters.

“Nope,” Cosette says out loud. “It’s noon. Wake up.”

“Mmmph.” Eyes still closed, Éponine wrinkles her nose. In her fierce face the effect is _so cute_ that Cosette kind of can’t take it. 

“You are so cute,” Cosette says, and tries to push away the flutters in her chest as she kisses Éponine’s pouting lips. 

This time, with Éponine awake enough to notice, Cosette feels Éponine go from sleepy to confused to enthusiastic under her. Her tongue leads the way, then those slender arms twine their way around Cosette, a long-boned hand slides down the back of Cosette’s shirt and over the curve of her ass, and finally, Éponine’s body, too, follows, rocking in small, frustrated motions against the restrictions of the sheets. She kicks the covers out of the way and flips over atop Cosette when, suddenly, her eyes open all the way and her hand shoots up to clamp hard around Cosette’s neck. Then the eyes seem to finally take Cosette in, and she freezes for a moment.

Cosette smiles shakily up at her.

“Good morning, sweetie,” she gasps.

Éponine stares down. One of her hands is under Cosette’s shirt, on the oblique muscles of her waist, and the other has her throat in this iron grip that feels so good, but she looks like she’s half a breath from booting Cosette from her room.

“You said to wake you up,” Cosette tries again. It’s hard to focus with Éponine’s legs straddling her. “It’s noon.”

“Fuuuck,” Éponine says with dawning recognition, and something in her relaxes. “Fuck. It’s noon, and you’re here because I texted you and told you to wake me up at noon, but then the six cups of coffee told _me_ to stay up till eight writing.”

“Good for you!”

Éponine shakes her head as if to clear it. Her hair brushes Cosette’s cheek. “This is so fucking surreal, I just can’t. I’m gonna sleep and then we’ll talk, ‘kay?” She rolls off of Cosette and burrows back in the sheets.

“Sure,” Cosette says. “Can I stay here and study?”

“Be my guest,” Éponine mumbles from the depths of her pillow, flapping her hand magnanimously toward the unused portion of the bed.

Cosette pulls a pillow into the corner with her and makes a little study nest. It’s quiet and calm there, and she gets through a dense journal article on soil contaminants while her real girlfriend sleeps at her side.

*

“How am I supposed to act normal?” Éponine’s voice startles her out of her annotations. Cosette blinks up from the page and registers that she’s been reading for hours. She hasn’t been able to sink into her studies like this in ages. Not since Marius. 

Beside her, Éponine has rolled up onto one arm and is looking at her distrustfully.

“What?” Cosette marks her place.

“I mean, what’s your normal when you wake up with someone? Like, foot-rubs and teddy bears? Cause that may be incompatible with someone whose regular morning-after is a couple _fuck-you_ s and a slap on the ass on the way out.”

“I don’t like teddy bears.”

“Shouldn’t we talk out all the shit we like and don’t like so we know this stuff going in? If two people like us were really dating, we’d have to make a lot of compromises.”

“We really _are_ dating.”

Éponine rolls her eyes.

“And I don’t mind if you slap my ass.” The 4x100 relay team did it all the time, and Cosette always got a little thrill from it, especially when she was still proud and panting from a hard anchor leg.

“Fuck you, that’s not the point.”

“I like that _fuck you_ too,” Cosette teases. She really does, though. Éponine’s voice is always rough, and right now, heavy from sleep, it’s basically a growl. “And a month of compromising’s not much. Each of us yields here and there, we’re set.”

“No fucking kittens, okay? No hearts. No flowers. No nicknames.”

Cosette holds up a hand in firm interjection. “Endearments?”

“Like what?”

“Sweetie. Babe. Boo.”

“Not in front of other people,” Éponine concedes. “And never Boo.”

“I do like foot-rubs,” Cosette says, nudging Éponine’s thigh with her toe.

“Feet are disgusting.” The hard set of Éponine’s face is fascinating. It’s really quite beautiful. It’s distant and cool and god, Cosette remembers watching those hawk eyes boring into her from on high while she got it on with a stranger’s leg in a crowd and here they are in _bed_ together? 

“Not a dealbreaker,” Cosette says, trying not to stare.

“No?” Éponine sounds, at best, vaguely interested. Cosette really wants to stare.

“I should also say—” Cosette begins.

Éponine sits up fully and, in one fluid motion, strips off the white tank she’s been sleeping in. Small, dark brown nipples tip her breasts. Cosette’s breath catches. She stares.

“—I really really like sex. Like, full disclosure: _really_.”

Éponine stands and pulls off her underpants. Seeing Éponine naked is like seeing the tiger loosed from its cage—equal parts raw appreciation of beauty and paralyzing terror. Oh man, Cosette is so ready for this.

Taking a slow step toward her, then another, Éponine drags out the anticipation. Cosette’s stomach churns. 

Then Éponine steps right past her, and Cosette is almost too distracted by the tight lines of her ass to notice what she’s saying. “Cool,” Éponine nods, grabbing a handful of clothes from her dresser. “I got shit to do today. If you want to stick around, you can rub one out while I’m in the shower.”

Fuck.

*

Cosette would like to say that she has the self-control to wait. She does not. Eyeing Éponine’s discarded clothes on the floor, she does manage to hold out just until the shower turns on down the hall. Then her hand’s in her jeans and she’s going at it hard and fast. She can make this in no time.

Éponine’s quick in the shower, though, and quicker getting dressed again after. 

Cosette really didn’t mean to still be at it when Éponine got back, but the door opens and there’s Cosette, splay-legged, tight pants pulled down just enough to make room, with a couple of fingers inside herself and the thumb working her clit, pink-faced and gasping. 

Cosette freezes. “Crap.”

Éponine smiles that little smile and lets the door close at her back, but makes no move toward the bed.

“Should I stop?” 

Éponine doesn’t say anything.

Her thumb twitches on her clit and her legs twitch involuntarily. God, this is so embarrassing. “I should stop.”

Éponine pouts out her lip a little. “Really? You stop jerking it when your girlfriend sees you?” She shakes her head like Cosette has disappointed her. “Keep going, girlfriend. Come for me.”

Éponine’s rough voice, those words. _Come for me,_ she said. _For me._

Cosette wants to come for her all right; she wants to come _on_ her, _against_ her, _with_ her. 

“Come here,” Cosette pants. “Please.”

Éponine shakes her head. “I have two minutes,” she says dryly. “Should I leave you to it?”

“No,” Cosette moans. Not counting the occasional ephemeral grinding on a dance floor, she has never jacked off in front of anyone except Marius, and that very rarely and while touching him, leaning against him, his hard slender muscles balancing her out. Still, feeling her face flush darker and her body heat up, Cosette resumes her efforts. She moves her hand faster and harder. 

Éponine looks the same as usual, but fresh—a green tank, dark jeans. Her hair’s wet and dripping where it hits her shirt, and there’s a wet spot above one of her breasts. Her breasts. Cosette watches and remembers that quick glimpse of Éponine’s small breasts, imagines catching those nipples in her mouth, teasing them, hearing the sounds Éponine might make it she did, and through this all, Cosette’s hand is moving, her mouth is shaping itself around words that don’t exist, Éponine is gazing at her with some approximation of tolerance, and Cosette comes. 

It catches her by surprise. She arches up from the bed, biting her lips so she won’t cry out. Her inner muscles clench at her fingers. It’s not what she wants. She wants a mouth on hers. She wants the weight of someone else’s hands. She wants to be held. But at least she has Éponine’s eyes.

With the rush of feeling comes a lessening of shame. Sure, she gets that this is weird. It was weird enough getting off in view of Éponine at the party; it should be a million times weirder to have Éponine watch her in this almost clinical little room, just the two of them. The walls are gone. Éponine was watching Cosette; Cosette was watching Éponine. 

Cosette’s made it clear that physical attraction’s part of this whole deal, right? Because it definitely is. 

“You good?” Éponine asks a moment later. Cosette hasn’t even caught her breath.

“Yes, I—”

“Great, we gotta go.”

“Go?” Cosette is too sex-drunk for this.

“I have work? You’re walking me to the library, right?”

“Oh, um. Sure. Just let me...” Cosette indicates her wet right hand, at the same time struggling to her feet and managing to refasten her jeans with just the left. 

Éponine grabs a backpack from the floor. “Let’s go,” she says.

“Can’t I just use your sink to—”

“No time.” Before Cosette’s registered it, Éponine has taken her by the defiled right hand and is dragging her down the hall toward the stairs. Her head swims with this. Éponine won’t let her wash off, and is instead intertwining her own fingers with Cosette’s slippery fluids.

Éponine doesn’t let go as they clomp down the stairs. In the main room, which comprises living area, dining room, and open kitchen, several other Amis are lounged around doing homework, planning events, and playing games. Jehan’s baking cookies with Grantaire. A few of their friends glance up at Éponine’s entrance, then snap to confused attention when they see she’s holding hands with Cosette.

“Hey everyone,” Éponine declares grimly. “Fauche went _loca_ and now I’m her girlfriend. Fucking deal with it.” She leads them straight out the door before they can hear more than a quick murmur of the astonished response.

The walk to the library is strange. Walking her bike beside Éponine, Cosette can’t lose focus on the feel of Éponine’s hand in hers. They’re sticky—maybe more crusty, now, which seems disgusting, and is a little embarrassing for her. 

She prattles on the walk. She can’t even recall later about what, but probably her chemistry lab students and her soils research and swim team and internship interviews and whatever else she talks about when she’s nervous.

Meanwhile, her mind is tussling with itself. _This isn’t what I meant_ , one part of her yells. _I’m not supposed to feel fluttery and embarrassed and thrilled. It’s supposed to be comfortable, old-hat, not edgy. I’m not supposed to be fantasizing about her taunting me. Every time I think I’m getting used to her, she throws me off-balance again._

 _I don’t have room in my life for some all-consuming sex fantasy. I’m not trying to play games. I just want something steady. Comfortable. Easy. Walking and chatting and holding hands like ... like_ this _._

At the library, Éponine releases her hand. “Later,” she says, and Cosette isn’t sure how to respond, but figures a kiss is cool. No teasing, no flirting. Just a kiss.

Pulling back from the quick smooch, she asks, “Text me when you’re off?” 

“Okay, sweet-lips.” Éponine lifts her left hand to her mouth and lets it linger there for just a moment, where she must smell Cosette on her fingers, before she blows Cosette a sarcastic kiss goodbye. Cosette goes bright red.

 _‘Bad things happen_ ,’ she thinks wildly as Éponine strides through the heavy main doors. _Where the hell is my posse?_

*

Her posse, of course, lives with her. And sometimes it’s hard to talk about change with the people you’re closest to. Cosette puts it off as long as she can.

Éponine texts her around dinnertime. 

_shelving sucks ass_

Before Cosette can reply, a follow-up:

_off at 10, coming over_

_**Cool** , _Cosette texts back, then immediately realizes she has some shit to tell her housemates. No more excuse for delay.

_do not know where you live_

_**1832 Monte Vista, #2** _

“Hey guys?” Cosette looks up from her phone. “You going out tonight?”

Leticia delicately dabs sauce from her mouth with a paper napkin. “Dancing. Want to come?”

“No thanks,” Cosette says. “I’m actually expecting someone.”

“Ooooh,” Floréal teases. “Someone important?”

“Um. My girlfriend, actually.”

“Oh shit! _¿Estoy_ freaking _grifo?_ You actually did it?”

“Yeah?” Cosette says.

Lety looks from Floréal’s delighted grin to Cosette’s flushed cheeks and announces, “I have no idea what you crazies are talking about.”

“Cosette asked someone to be her girlfriend for the rest of the school year so she can stop thinking with her _panochita_ and finish her classes.”

Lety laughs. “Wait, you just started seeing someone and you think that’s going to make you think about sex _less_?”

Cosette buries her head in her arms. “It made sense when Flor told me to do it.”

“Is it working?”

“So far?” Cosette moans. “No.” But this isn’t quite true. Yes, she’s been wound up tight all afternoon, but at the same time, between the studying in Éponine’s room this morning and the lab reports she’s reviewed this afternoon, it’s been her most productive day in months. “Sort of?”

“So who’s the girl? Do we know her?”

“Actually, yeah, you’ve probably seen her around. It’s someone from Amis House. Her name’s Éponine?”

Lety and Floréal both wheel on her with faces of mock shock. 

“Shit, you are insane,” Floréal goggles. “Hasn’t that girl hated you forever?”

“Maybe not?” Cosette grins a helpless grimace of a grin. “She said yes.”

“And now she’s coming over to, what, _study_?” Lety looks horrified.

“To fuck me, I hope.”

“To strangle you, more like.”

Cosette recalls Éponine’s long fingers seizing her neck, and feels the blush coming back.

“You want us out of here?” Floréal asks. “I mean, you know _I’ll_ be cool, but this one...” She gestures to Lety, who, behind crossed arms, is doing her best impression of a suspicious and sour-faced _telenovela abuela_.

“Maybe just say hi for a minute? You can do that. Just... there’s this _thing_ we’re doing where I asked her to act like we’re in a real relationship. So just pretend we’ve been dating forever, okay?”

“You’ve been dating for like an hour,” Lety objects crisply. “I’ve never even talked to this girl. Who are her people? What are her prospects?” She purses her lips and pretends to adjust invisible spectacles. 

Cosette giggles. “Well, think about what you’d say to Marius if he was still dating me.”

At the mention of Marius, Lety breaks character. “I’d say, stop fucking moping on my couch, asshole, and get a life.”

“ _Malcriada,_ ” Floréal pats Lety on the shoulder. “What you’d say if she still liked him.”

“Yeah, I just said it.”

The doorbell rings at 10:15. 

Lety gets there first.

“Who’s there?” she sing-songs through the door.

“This where Cosette lives?” Éponine’s rough voice saws back.

“Who’s asking?”

“Just let her in,” Cosette says, exasperated, nudging Lety out of the way and turning the bolt.

In the dark of their outside walkway, Éponine hangs back, narrow and aloof with feet planted a little wide and a cross-body satchel weighing down one bony shoulder.

Cosette takes her hand and drags her in.

“Lety,” she says, helping divest Éponine of her straining bookbag, “you know Éponine.”

“I really don’t,” Lety smirks, pouting out her lips a little. 

“You _know_ each other,” Cosette insists.

Éponine and Lety both roll their eyes. 

“Leticia Cabral,” Lety offers, holding out a hand.

Éponine reaches as if to shake it, then pulls back as if stung.

“You’ve never liked me, have you?” she demands of Lety. It’s a good act. Lety and Cosette are both startled, for half a moment, into almost believing it. “No matter what I do, I’ll never be good enough for her, will I? Listen, from now on, I’m gonna steer clear of you, give you your space. But you better believe I give Cosette exactly what she wants.”

Lety tries hard for the hard-faced disdain that should greet such a speech, but chuckles instead. Her perfect ringlets toss and settle in loose curls that frame her face.

“Cool,” she says. “Just keep a lid on the whining and we’re all right. You ready, Flor?”

“Yep, yep,” Floréal says, emerging from the bathroom in a rose-printed bustier, tight jeans, and heels. She’s tied her hair up in a high pony so the enormous earrings she’s fastening can swing loose to her shoulders. “Ready to dance?” She nods in Cosette’s direction as if Éponine’s presence in their apartment is an everyday thing. “Hey, Ép. Sure you _chicas_ don’t want to come?” She shimmies playfully in her tall shoes.

“Got stuff to do,” says Éponine. “Thanks.”

  


**Chapter 3: Éponine**

Éponine said yes for one reason: to figure Cosette out. Cosette’s double-majoring in biochem and ecology, swims with Olympians, and has all the outward appearance of having her shit together, but she also is the kind of girl who’s been known to stare dreamily across the room at a boy for hours at a time and who switches out her shoelaces to match her top. Is she candy-coated iron? Or just a beautiful, well-dressed, shapely, tantalizingly-fuckable fucking mess? 

Okay, two reasons: to figure Cosette out, and to get fucked.

Éponine gets it when she wants it. That’s not a problem. But it’s usually just fucking. This is something more; obviously, Cosette feels complicated things about her. Even someone who hadn’t studied Cosette for years could hardly fail to see this.

And Éponine _has_ studied her. First, with a sense of vague and unenthusiastic responsibility for this naive princess she’d reluctantly tended to in the freshman dorms, then, with greater scrutiny at the uncomplicated ease with which Cosette seemed, always, to get everything she wanted. Friends flocked to her; people cared for her; Marius—the good and gentle older boy who had stood up for Éponine in her tween years, who just by chance happened to be attending the same college Éponine fought to go to—tumbled into instant and unquestioning love at his first contact with her. Éponine was there to see it happen. She knew.

As a rule, Éponine did not love men, but then, she loved precious few people at all. Marius was one of the very few who even came close. Over the years, her childhood reverence of this man had matured to adoration, then mellowed to admiration. The fine lines of his body reflected a firm moral structure; the clean high brow seemed to signify lofty thoughts, great intelligence. He had seemed, always, utterly unconcerned with romance. Thoughts of physical love seemed below his notice. 

So, then, why Cosette? Of all possible lovers, why did he light on this flighty girl? 

Éponine had studied this question.

Upon observation and reflection, she had noted these truths: that Cosette was smart; that she was considerate; that while she seemed to accept love without question—even, maybe, to _expect_ it—she loved back with an open-eyed fullness; and that much as she might chatter, she was always _asking_ , always looking to take in more of the world that surrounded her.

It was charming; it was alluring; it made you want to have her all to yourself. 

Increasingly repulsed, Éponine watched Marius try. He did not know how to love casually, could not conceive of it, began to see Cosette’s every independent act as an affront to the primacy of their union. Éponine, raised amid monsters of all stripes, wondered how far Cosette would let it go. 

She would never have guessed that Cosette would stand up for herself as soon as she did. She caught Cosette on the stairs as she rushed away from the defiant beginning of the breakup, and in that moment, eyes brimming and aflame, Cosette was unquestionably in control of her own life. Éponine nodded at her and let her run.

Marius raged. He obsessed. He begged.

Cosette was done.

Courfeyrac and Enjolras persuaded him to leave. For a year, his grandfather had called nearly every day from Paris with another plea for his grandson and his new business degree to hop on the next plane. Investors were clamoring to expand the company. He needed Marius there.

When Marius finally left, Éponine thought she would feel at least vaguely melancholic. She didn’t. In fact, she was startled at how much it felt like a relief. And then, weeks later, when she saw Cosette without Marius, dancing in that crowd, she felt something else—something that confused and annoyed and excited her.

Now she knows why.

Overendowed with charm, Cosette was left no room for guile. Her blushes and her gaze paint a telling tableau: she seems to yearn for both Éponine’s scorn and her lips—she wants them both _together_ —and with the stage set thus, how can Éponine fail to bring the house down?

The moment Cosette’s roommates have gone—Floréal with a grin and Lety with a ridiculously high-drama charade of the cold shoulder—Cosette is throwing those big, wide-open looks at her again, the ones that make her look like a giant unadulterated pit of desire, and that make Éponine want to plummet in.

“Can I—?” Cosette asks, kissing her.

Éponine kisses back for a moment, but only that much. She will not stumble.

“I brought some reading,” she says, pulling back, and inwardly cackles at the look of dismay on Cosette’s face. The girl wasn’t kidding when she said she liked sex. “I have a forty-page comp lit thesis due in three weeks, Fauche. Can you handle that?”

“Yeah,” Cosette manages. The want is written in every line of her face. “Sure, babe.”

Cosette digs some notebooks from her room and they settle on the couch. After a while, Cosette fluffs herself up like a little chicken and rearranges herself so that her head’s in Éponine’s lap. 

It’s kind of cozy. Below Cosette’s head, Éponine feels warm and pleasantly tingly. 

Éponine flips a page and rests a hand on Cosette’s forehead. Another page, and she strokes the hair gently to the side. A few more, and she runs a finger over the curve of Cosette’s ear. 

In her lap, Cosette shivers.

“Actually,” she says, a little hesitant, “can you not? I have a thing about my ears.”

Éponine moves her hand back, mechanically, to Cosette’s hair, but her mind’s lost its focus.

“This isn’t doing it for me,” she says.

“What do you mean?” Cosette sounds anxious. “Do you have, like, a thing _for_ ears?”

Éponine growls. “If you were _really_ my girlfriend, I’d know all this shit about you already.”

“Oh, come on,” Cosette says. “That’s nothing. You know a lot about me.”

“Huh.” She mulls it over. “Okay, itemized list: Everything I know about Cosette Fauchelevent. 1. You were a fucking stupid freshman. 2. You like pretty drinks and pretty dresses. 3. You’re a quiet fuck.”

“What?” Cosette feigns horror, or maybe she’s actually horrified. Her cheeks are quite bright. “You don’t know—”

“Um, yeah. Trust me, living in Amis House, we _all_ know.”

“What else?”

“I dunno. I was gonna say, _4\. You’re getting_ less _stupid_ , but this whole thing we’re doing, this pretend-girlfriends playacting thing, is like textbook idiotic, so I can’t really commit to that one.”

Cosette offers, “4. I am very nice to look at naked.” She twitches the hem of her t-shirt to reveal several inches of firm, softly curving belly. The smooth skin seems to tug at Éponine’s free hand. She does not succumb to the temptation.

“4. You think everyone wants you cause you’re cute.”

Éponine always thought Cosette was cute—dumb cute—but somewhere today, that’s shifted. Cosette blushing and flawed and needy is not cute, she’s fucking beautiful.

“Well, I mean...” Cosette winks up at her. Damn it, this girl knows how to play a lover straight into bed.

“5. You’re horny as hell. And you like having me hold it over you.”

Cosette murmurs enthusiastic assent. “See, that’s kind of a lot that you know. And anyway, you’re my girlfriend, so you know so much _other stuff_ too.”

“Like what?”

“Like, my favorite place to kiss you.”

“What?” Éponine has no idea about this. In their limited history from this one day, they’ve mostly just kissed on the lips. This must be where Fauchelevent’s crazy plan fully commits to the plunge from slim facts into voluptuous make-believe. “My shoulders?”

“No, goose,” Cosette says, shifting upward so she’s half-sitting. “That’s my favorite part of you to _look_ at. My favorite place to kiss you is right here.” 

Éponine has a little scorpion tattooed in tiny black lines just behind and below her left ear. Her hair covers it. Éponine didn’t realize that Cosette even knew about it. Most people never see. Like someone who’s done it a thousand times, Cosette lifts the curtain of hair and her soft lips touch that spot. Éponine tenses up, and Cosette sucks lightly at the skin, then teases it with her tongue and pulls away. 

Surely Cosette has never kissed her there before.

She looks at Éponine carefully, eyes big and artless and so stupidly pretty.

“ _You know_ that my birthday’s March 14 and that my favorite drink is anything with coconut rum in it and _I_ know that you pretend you think it’s disgusting and call me a sorority girl, but you love kissing the flavor out of my mouth, just like how you pretend you don’t like attention but you love that everyone watches us when you lick salt from my collarbone before you take a shot, because _I know_ you like to look like you own me. And you don’t even play like you need a lime after.” Her tone shifts from make-believe to confessional. “That part I just know.”

Éponine _thought_ she’d noticed Cosette observing her before when the Amis House crew drank together. The proof is nice. And the fantasy is not without appeal.

Cosette continues. “ _I know_ you refuse to tell anyone your birthday, that not even R knows, but after months and months of badgering, I finally got you to at least admit that you’re older than me.”

Éponine objects. “When did I tell you that?”

“Thought so!” Cosette smiles a self-satisfied little smile that makes Éponine want to pinch her, to watch her squirm. 

“ _You know_ sometimes when you act cute I want to cause you physical pain.”

Cosette nods, smirking. “I know it gets you hot to think about hurting me.”

Oh fuck. 

“ _You know_ ,” Éponine says, changing the topic, “that I’m vegan,” (and Cosette nods as if she already _actually_ knew this one too, which is a surprise), “and that I work in the library in the arts annex, and that I’m starting my librarian degree at Lamarque in fall, and you know that I drink at least four cups of coffee most days, all black, and that everything you say to me, without limitation, may get run past Grantaire. _You know_ that I’m better with my hands than my mouth, and _you know_ you never so much as unbuckle my belt without asking. _You know_ there’s some shady backstory I’m not telling you that means I go straight from asleep to punching.

“ _You know_ ,” she says, letting her fingers venture down Cosette’s nose to probe softly at her lips, “that I get off on tormenting you, and that sometimes I make you fucking beg.” Cosette’s tongue has crept slyly out to taste Éponine’s fingertips. It curls around the pointer finger; Éponine keeps on. “And _I know_ the longer I make you wait for it, the more times I can get you to come.”

A wrinkle forms on Cosette’s forehead. From around Éponine’s finger, which has found its way into the warm caress of Cosette’s mouth, she says, “That might not be true.”

Éponine clucks her tongue in a scold and smiles to herself. She plunges her finger in deeper and is gratified to feel Cosette moan around it. “I said _I know_.” Cosette shudders. “Now, get up here and kiss me.”

Cosette flings herself upward in her alacrity to get close. Éponine pulls her in so that Cosette sits astride her lap. 

“You get five minutes,” Éponine whispers into Cosette’s neck. 

“For what?”

“Till I get back to the shit I have to do. _I’m_ not the one with focus problems, sweets.”

Cosette has so many focus problems, the bulk of which seem to originate under her slim-fitting slacks and boatneck. Her body _is_ distracting, Éponine admits to herself as she lets her hands grab the muscled curves of Cosette’s ass as Cosette kisses and grinds against her.

Five minutes is up in no time. The two, one appealingly disheveled and indignant about the time limit, return to their studies, where they remain sprawled together till the words blur and their eyes close, until Flor and Lety stumble in hours later.

“Well, _that’s_ realistic at least,” Lety says to Cosette when she shakes her awake for bed.

“Don’t you dare fuck upbed from me when I’m going to sleep alone,” a tipsy Floréal warns Cosette in the bathroom. 

Éponine, already shepherded into the tidy warmth of Cosette’s top bunk, hears Cosette mock Floréal for “upbed.” As Cosette’s climbing up the little wooden ladder a few minutes later, she says, “Just heading upbed now, don’t mind me,” and Floréal grumbles from below, “Salt in the fucking wounds, girl.”

Then Cosette’s tumbling under the down comforter with her, and Cosette’s arms are around her in the dark, their heads pillowed on the same pillow, and Éponine can’t help but kiss the absence of emptiness where she knows Cosette must be. Sleep, when it comes again, is slow and dreamy. 

*

The next day’s Sunday, and Sunday afternoons mean movies at the Amis House.

“You _know_ I get furious when they fuck with my heartstrings, right?”

“Uh, _yeah_ ,” Cosette agrees. “I mean, we’ve seen a thousand movies together, and you’re not a person who politely hides displeasure. I really knew that one.”

Because Cosette broke character, Éponine pinches her. Upper arm, just inside. Cosette cuts off a squeal and goes red.

Cosette whispers, “ _You know_ that I always want to touch you. Is that okay?”

“Where?”

“Leg. Maybe toward the top. Definitely pushing public-space boundaries.”

“Go for it. I’ll say if I don’t like it.”

As the opening credits roll, Cosette breathes into Éponine’s ear, “ _You know_ our safeword is _chicharrones_.”

Éponine can’t stifle a snort. “Seriously?” 

Cosette just moves her hand higher on Éponine’s thigh, and Éponine has nothing to say about that.

*

The movie turns out to be serious and terrible, and afterward there’s a serious and terrible discussion about it, and Cosette is teary and Éponine feels vaguely like she’d like to burn society to the ground. When they break, it’s early evening.

Éponine drags Cosette up the stairs and shoves her through the door of her room, turning the deadbolt behind her.

 _“You know_ ,” she says, quiet and murderous, “that I don’t cry.”

“No,” breathes Cosette from the bed, where she has fallen on purpose. Her flouncy summer skirt’s fallen back to reveal one whole leg and most of the other. In the dim room, all that pale brown skin glows. It’s so calculated, and so _pretty_. “I know you have other ways to deal with pain.”

Éponine strides back and forth a few times, formulating a plan of action, then strikes. “Underwear off,” she orders. “Now.”

Cosette turns a lovely shade of rose and tugs up the hem of her skirt a little more. There was no underwear this whole time—just bare skin and an artful little patch of dark hair. She’s been waiting for this. 

“Touch yourself.”

Cosette, beautifully, asks no questions. Without breaking eye contact, she leans back on her elbows, splaying her knees, licks wetly at her pretty pastel fingertips, then runs those fingers gently over her swelling labia. She plays with herself slowly, teasing and tweaking her own skin and casting that sweet, impassioned gaze on Éponine.

Unlike the other day, Éponine notes, Cosette’s not touching her clit, nor reaching inside herself. She’s glistening and her breath’s coming fast, but her touch stays light, superficial. 

“ _You remember_ at first you hate-fucked me so hard you thought you were hurting me,” Cosette says, and she sounds defiant and challenging but also there’s that frisson of embarrassment, “and _I_ said...” Cosette trails off, tilting her head back to expose her long throat

Éponine can fill in this made-up memory. “You said, ‘Fuck you, Thénardier, that all you got?’” (at this, Cosette’s eyes flicker warmly) “and I fucked you so raw that every time I _looked at_ you for the next week, you came in your pants.” She lifts Cosette’s slender, compliant wrist away from her cunt and forces it down beside her head. With her other hand, Éponine takes over what Cosette left off. She explores the tender skin, finds it wet and ready. She slides her fingers against the leaking entrance to her pussy. She’s thinking about starting slow, just a finger at a time, when she remembers Marius’s stupid grunts from down the hallway while he plowed an almost-silent Cosette, and Cosette teasing Éponine with the knowledge that Éponine wants to see her abased, and with no warning, Éponine plunges three fingers in. 

Below her, Cosette mewls, which is very satisfying, so Éponine does it again. And again. And again. Cosette’s muscled legs are strong around her, penning Éponine in so that she has to kneel up a little to make room for her hand, which fucks in and out of Cosette’s wet cunt with a slippery suction, like Cosette doesn’t want to let her go.

Cosette writhes under her. Éponine grips the wrist harder. Her fingers must be biting into the sturdy bones there. Cosette whimpers.

It’s not enough.

“ _You remember,_ ” Éponine whispers savagely into Cosette’s delicate ear, “the first time I made you yell.”

“No,” gasps Cosette.

Éponine’s mind tells her to stop; _no_ in sex means stop. But Cosette’s still thrusting against those fingers—as much as she can with Éponine on top of her—and she whispers, “Fuck you, Thénardier, give me _more_.”

Right. A girl who makes sure to tell you a safeword during a disaster documentary might be a girl who’s going to say _no_ when she wants you to keep fucking her. This is not the sex she thought she was signing on for with Cosette, but what was that, even?

“Please!” Cosette whines.

Éponine is not complaining.

“You don’t get to say no,” Éponine hisses, fucking harder and angrier, and letting the knuckle of her pinkie graze the tender skin between Cosette’s welcoming pussy and her asshole. Cosette wriggles harder. To arrest the movement, Éponine lies as heavily as she can atop Cosette’s heaving chest. “That’s not how this works.”

“I just...” Cosette moans. She is a mess, hot and flushed, the pressure near her ass pushing her closer and closer. “I don’t remember. The yelling.”

“Then,” says Éponine, “I’d better remind you.”

Éponine relinquishes her hold on Cosette’s hand and is gratified to see that Cosette keeps pressed to the pillow where Éponine left it. She wraps her hand around the base of Cosette’s long throat. There’s a thin gold chain there with a little golden bird. Éponine’s thumb captures the charm and jams it into the soft skin. It can’t feel good. Cosette is trembling. At her neck, Éponine’s fingers tighten around the bones and ligaments and tender flesh, and her hand below slows, strokes, tugs. The fingers spread wide, and then, there it is, Cosette’s wracked with spasms, her pussy clenching in waves around Éponine’s fingers.

It is good. It’s also disappointingly quiet. Same as every time Cosette fucked Marius down the hall—same, Éponine would wager, as every time Cosette’s ever fucked anyone. 

She is suddenly a little irrationally mad. _Who the fuck told you, Fauche, that this was all you fucking get? Who made you think you had to settle for so-so sex and a couple stifled whimpers? What makes you think you’re supposed to fucking hold back?_

Without pulling out her hand, Éponine slides down Cosette’s body. Inside, her fingers bend forward to find the swollen, eager spot above the pubic bone. Like slowly beckoning to bring someone near, she pulls her fingers toward her palm, dragging the tips across the G-spot.

“I can’t...” Cosette whispers, half-laughing because her whole vibrating body’s still coming down from the climax. “I’m not ready for—”

Éponine takes Cosette’s clit in her mouth and strokes with her fingers again. 

“Oh my god,” Cosette says, not laughing anymore. “Oh god, Éponine, oh god, oh god.”

In time with the drag of her fingers, Éponine sucks lightly at the hard little bump of the clitoris. 

“Oh god, Ép, oh fuck, oh fuck.” The words are louder than speech now, but probably not audible outside the room. 

Éponine pulls back for a moment. Her fingers keep stroking, but her head moves to Cosette’s firm thigh. She bites at it, hard, and Cosette yelps. She bites again, sucking hard enough to raise a bruise. If Cosette is going to be her fucking girlfriend, she’d better be prepared for some marks.

“More, please, please, please, just please Éponine, give me—oh my _god_.” Éponine’s tongue circles the clit, licks at it quick and light and Cosette’s bucking up into her mouth trying to get Éponine to suck her again. “Please, oh god, I just... I _need_...” and her whining has pitched higher; this has to be audible in the stairwell, probably down in the main room, maybe even upstairs where a squeak of springs suggests that the trio may be engaging in similar activities.

Stretching a long arm up to clench Cosette’s lovely throat, Éponine sucks. 

“ _Oh my... oh! oh! ohhhhhhhhh._ ” It is gorgeously loud, and Cosette sounds gorgeously horrified with herself even as she keeps yelling, because Éponine is circling her tongue around the clit, still working it over, and Cosette doesn’t know it yet, but she’s going to come twice more in the next ten minutes, and everyone on the goddamned _block_ is going to hear.

That’ll fucking show her.

  


**Chapter 4: Cosette**

Floréal’s remedy is shockingly effective. 

Cosette is _on her shit_.

She studies into the night, tumbles into bed with her thornily-gorgeous girlfriend, wakes up with all the blankets and Éponine draped across her, aces an exam, astonishes the adoring freshmen in her lab section and the stodgy professor who leads her research group, and remembers to stop by the market for the tomatoes and limes Lety asked her to pick up on her bike ride back from campus. 

This is going to work so well.

After dinner, she stuffs fresh clothes into her pack and bikes over to Amis House.

Bossuet lets her in. It’s tutorial night, and huddles of mystery students pack the downstairs. In every pool of light, people study. Éponine’s curled up in the ancient recliner under a lamp, headphones blocking out everything but her book. When Cosette’s shadow alerts Éponine to her presence, when she looks up, the oddest expression compresses her eyes for a moment. It’s not confusion, not exactly, nor gratitude nor fear, but definitely surprise—and at more, Cosette thinks, than just the surprise of being wrenched from the depths of an 18th-century page into a crowded 21st-century living-room. 

Then Éponine’s grabbed Cosette by the back of the neck and pulled her in for a kiss, and it is so truly satisfying, after a long day, to know that she was right in promising herself that this kiss awaited.

“Can I squeeze in?”

Éponine raises her eyebrows but edges over. The teetery old base of the chair threatens to lean. “Get in quick!” she says, so Cosette does.

She’s been bookmarking articles on JSTOR for weeks for this paper she’s supposed to revise, and now, cuddled side to side with her girlfriend in a room packed with students, seems as good a time as any to actually read them.

Unfortunately, as much as she tries to pretend this is normal, her bare arm pressed to Éponine’s, Éponine’s soft breaths and sharp page-turns distract her. This isn’t old hat. It’s not normal. It’s new and exciting and damn it, she doesn’t want to just sit here like old marrieds and _study_. She fights her way through one and a half articles, copying notes into another doc, before the need for more contact manifests itself in a physical discomfort that forces her to wriggle in her seat.

She wants to touch Éponine. Everywhere. And Éponine hasn’t let her—not yet. When Cosette has asked, Éponine has only said no. The first few times, Cosette was limp and sated and let it go, but the last time, last night, they were making out in Éponine’s bed and Éponine seemed, for once, to be less than completely in control. Her hips were trembling, her voice shaky, and if she wasn’t exactly grinding against Cosette, at least she was permitting Cosette an awful lot of friction against _her_.

Cosette was naked on the cool sheets; above her, Éponine was in underpants and a t-shirt. Cosette had chanced drifting a hand along the top of Éponine’s bare thigh, and Éponine had shuddered into the touch.

“Can I get you off?” Cosette had asked.

The answer was immediate. “Nope.”

“Oh.” Cosette said, disappointed. “I thought—” 

“Yeah, I’m your fucking girlfriend, Fauche, but not every girlfriend wants to fuck every single time _you_ do.”

“Oh.” Cosette really should have considered this.

Éponine’s hard, dark eyes were always a challenge. “But don’t let that get in in _your_ way.” Her leg rubbed against Cosette and her thumb dipped between Cosette’s lips, and all Cosette’s worries had fallen away. At least Éponine seems to enjoy seeing _her_ come. Hearing her, too, it seems like. 

Looking around the crowded living room now as she calculates the disturbingly loud percentage of its occupants who have now heard literally every single yell she’s ever uttered during sex, she blushes and fidgets in her seat.

Éponine stills her with a hand on Cosette’s jeans.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Kay.” 

Éponine hasn’t looked up from her book. Cosette feels the weight of the hand on her leg through every bit of her body.

“But.”

“Yeah?” Éponine shifts the headphones forward so that Cosette can lean in and talk into her ear. While she’s there, she kisses the scorpion, and thinks about the other tattoo—the one on Éponine’s leg, that they haven’t talked about yet, but that Cosette has observed as closely as she has dared. Who else knows it’s even there?

Éponine’s eyes click hard from right to left. 

“I just think about _you_ a lot. When I’m with you.”

“Yeah?” Éponine sounds neither startled nor pleased, but perhaps vaguely curious. “Like what, fantasies?”

“Better,” Cosette whispers into her ear. “ _Memories._ ”

“From our single weekend of passion?” Éponine sniffs, incredulous.

“Époniiiine,” Cosette whines. “So long. It’s been sooo long.”

Éponine shakes her head a little. Cosette hopes this means she’s laughing.

“Shit, I forgot about this crazyboots shit. With what degree of certainty can you promise me that you’re not going to fucking imprison me in a moldy basement for a decade when it’s time for us to break up?”

“One little pretend memory and I’m a kidnapper?”

“Sorry. Murderer?”

“Neither. I told you. I’m just a really good girlfriend.”

She grins and tilts her body so that her breast will brush Éponine’s arm. 

“Girlfriend, whatever the shit that is on your computer looks like it needs you.”

Shit. Cosette’s been leaning on her keypad, and the contents of her database entry have been replaced by approximately five thousand Cs. Fortunately, it’s easy enough to revert the file; the data are fine.

“Can I tell you about them?”

“Your fucking science gibberish?”

“About the _memories.”_

Éponine flaps her book in mild frustration.

“One. You get one. Make it not bullshit.”

Okay. She sorts through her mental inventory and picks out a favorite to murmur into Éponine’s ear. “Every now and then for a treat when I pick you up at the library, you fuck me in the stacks.”

Éponine’s hair brushes coarsely over her face as she shakes her head.“I fucking work there, Fauche. I’m not tryna get canned.”

“Oh come on, babe, it’s a _fantasy_.”

“A fantasy where I get fired and/or expelled for public indecency?”

Cosette’s voice is a bare whisper now, very quiet and demure. “A fantasy where you slap a hand over my mouth and jam me up against a wall of books and fingerfuck me so hard I’m whimpering and maybe crying, and my mascara’s running—wait, I should know if you’re into that runny-makeup thing...”

Éponine, whose body has been tensing up like all the springs inside her have tightened in readiness, looks suddenly revolted. “God. No.”

“Okay, waterproof makeup, because I’m a sobbing mess and you’re saying the dirtiest things in my ear and giving it to me and I need it so bad I’m embarrassed, but you know that it gets me off having you know I’m embarrassed. And no one catches us.”

Éponine sticks her hands into the computer on Cosette’s lap, opens a new window, and types _Do you want BORING sex tonight so you can focus on your fucking work?_

“No!” Cosette gapes, appalled.

 _Then I am banishing you from this chair. Go work in the kitchen, hussy, until_ —she checks the clock— _1 a.m. Then you can take me to bed and I’ll suck your tits till you howl._

Cosette’s underwear are immediately and gratifyingly quite damp.

“Only if I get to touch yours,” she whispers back.

Éponine rolls her eyes, like it’s that easy. _Fine._

*

Working in the kitchen is the worst because the only spot at the counter is sandwiched between Joly, who is muttering disease names to himself as he pages through a three-inch tome of a spiral-bound notebook, and Enjolras, whose fevered typing keeps getting interrupted by the texts blowing up his phone. Cosette is surprised, honestly, that he hasn’t just turned it off, because that vibration through the Formica countertop is incredibly distracting, but every time, Enjolras picks up the phone and nibbles his lip thoughtfully and types something back. 

Working in the kitchen is also maybe the best. The muttering and texting are, at best, only minimally more interesting than the work that lies ahead of her, and are, therefore, a distraction lousy enough to actively avoid. Cosette twists up her hair, jams in her earphones, and gets to it.

*

She is actually startled when a kiss on the neck breaks her concentration.

“Whoa, it’s after one?”

Éponine gives that fractional grin. “Ready to call it a night?”

“I’m ready to call it _bedtime_ ,” Cosette shoots back, then blushes to realize that Grantaire is laughing at them. Somehow he must have turned up in the last two hours, as he’s perched on a stool at the end of the counter next to Enjolras. He salutes Cosette with his bottle as she claps her computer shut and follows her girlfriend out off the kitchen. 

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” he calls after them.

Éponine snorts. “I think I’m going to pretty much _only_ do things you wouldn’t do.”

“That’s fair!” he says. “Shout if you need anything!”

God, Cosette is so embarrassed. Grantaire doesn’t even live here. Somehow she hasn’t thought through the facts of her girlfriend’s life without her. Éponine _told_ Cosette she tells Grantaire everything. Cosette’s just never paused to consider that that included _her_.

But then they’re in the safety of Éponine’s tiny room, and suddenly she remembers Éponine’s promise for tonight, because Éponine has pulled off her shirt and Cosette’s mouth has gone slack.

“Can I—?”

“I _said_ you could, didn’t I?” Éponine sounds so matter-of-fact, like Cosette’s not melting inside at the chance to run her fingertips across the soft rise of Éponine’s breasts, to thumb the nipples and watch them harden into fierce little points, to look up imploringly and have Éponine nod, and _god_ , to take one into her mouth and lick and suck till Éponine’s trembling and says, “Take my fucking clothes off.”

The buckle of Éponine’s belt slips free easily—heavy metal, well-accustomed to the motions of fastening and removal—and Éponine shoves her own jeans and underwear down so that she is naked, top to toe. Éponine flops backward onto her mattress.

“You ever done this, Fauche?”

“What? You mean—” Cosette is watching Éponine’s nakedness—all of it, the delicate hardness of her ribs and hips, the impudent attitude with which she leans back on her elbows, the secret vision of her legs and the dark space between them.

“I mean, you ever eat pussy?”

“I—Well, I mean—” Cosette’s been with other girls. She’s touched them and rubbed off against them, but never used her mouth. “Not _exactly_ , but—”

“Lick me.” She looks Cosette right in the face, eyes steady and hard. If Cosette thought she was melting earlier, now she’s pure liquid, at the whim of Éponine’s gravitational pull. “Right fucking now. Lick me.”

Cosette kneels beside the bed. She leans forward, reaches to stroke a manicured finger, first, along the exposed labia. One of Éponine’s hands catches her wrist.

“I said, _Lick me_.” _Madre de Dios_. Of course Éponine’s still in control. Cosette’s tongue touches the soft skin, slides along it, and then she can’t help herself: her lips are curving forward so that she can suck at the same time as she licks, so that her mouth is filling with this tart, warm, new taste of Éponine and Éponine releases her hand in favor of tangling a hand in Cosette’s hair. “Holy fuck,” she gasps as Cosette’s lips tug at her, “I’m not even going to tell you what to do, because whatever the fuck this is you’re doing, it is going to get the fucking job done.” 

Cosette pulls back for a moment for breath and to beam at Éponine’s indirect praise. Éponine’s hand tightens in her hair. Cosette whimpers, pulsing with excitement at the touch, and licks more deeply into Éponine’s folds.

“You like that?” Éponine murmurs. 

Cosette moans into her.

“Good.” She pulls a little harder, experimentally, till Cosette is almost crying out even and rubbing her hips into the side of the mattress even as she caresses Éponine’s clit with her tongue.

Cosette wonders how many people Éponine has permitted to touch her like this. She pretty sure Éponine fucks around a lot. Maybe one-night stands are different. Maybe she lets them in right away. The thought sits oddly with Cosette. Éponine deserves better than a night’s pretense of intimacy. 

Éponine is bucking against her. “Touch yourself,” she growls.

Cosette doesn’t hesitate. She doesn’t even need lubrication; she’s soaking and swollen and just the press of her fingers against her own vulva threatens to push her over. 

“You come while I come in your mouth,” Éponine orders. “And make it fucking good.”

Éponine forces her head down hard, so that she’s trapped against and around Éponine’s heat. Éponine doesn’t whine—she breathes hard, and grunts, and finally starts to gasp.

Cosette lets her fingers push into herself, a little at a time, deeper and more erratic, stroke the curve of her pulsing inner walls, and she is shaking and can barely breathe and everything tastes like Éponine, and then she is coming _so hard_ and she can’t help it—she cries out, incoherent and twisted, into Éponine, and Éponine shudders hard, says, “Fucking _yes_ ,” and exhales like she’s just discovered breathing.

* * *

Cosette waylays Musichetta over a cup of coffee in the Amis House kitchen one morning later that week. Almost everyone’s up, but Éponine was writing till dawn again and is therefore sleeping.

“Didn’t she used to stop working sometimes? At least to sleep?”

Musichetta gives Cosette a Look. “C’mon, you started dating a month before graduation. No one’s sleeping enough. Seriously, _you_ were up till at _least_ two yourself.”

“‘Cause you and Joly badgered me into reviewing chem with you.” They’re both heading to med school in fall.

“Oh, right,” she chuckles. “Thanks, pal. It’s just that it’s not a very ... _representative_ time to start seeing someone, you know?”

“I just...” Cosette feels at a loss for the words. “I want to know what she’s like, what she does, who she _is_ when there aren’t all these deadlines hanging over her.”

“Give me a break, Fauche,” Musichetta says with a saucy slurp from her mug. “You’ve basically lived with us for three years now. You already _know_.”

Musichetta carries a fistful of mugs out to the back patio and leaves Cosette to rack her memory. She already knows?

* 

_Éponine a year ago, two years ago, skulking out of a room at Cosette’s arrival in it, or lurking shadowlike at its periphery. But what was she setting down, or leaving? Books, yes, of course, and tinny old music in the background, and_ sopa de ajo _on the crappy electric stove’s back burner, and hands-free conversations with Grantaire that seemed to span hours at a time as she slipped from common areas to bedroom to departure._

 _A family_ , she remembers. The people she doesn’t talk about. _One of them would call the house line sometimes; whoever got it would yell for Éponine in the way you yell when something matters._

_And more books. There were always books around her, then too. Her first library badge, where she’s almost smiling like a normal person, and Courf photocopied it till it was huge and grainy and stuck it on the fridge with a Comic Sans word bubble saying, “Take it from me: Today’s gonna be great!!!” It was there all year._

She’s everyone’s friend, Cosette realizes with a start. Everyone in Amis House loves each other. It’s basically the only rule. She hadn’t seen it because it wasn’t her place to see. Had the tension between them been horrible for everyone else, too? 

*

She carries coffee upstairs to shake Éponine awake, but finds her girlfriend already up and perched awkwardly around three different enormous books.

“You have your seminar in fifteen.”

“Yeah,” Éponine says absently, taking the coffee and gulping a hot mouthful. “Thanks.”

“Do you want something to eat?”

“Nah.”

“I’ll walk you to class.”

“Terrific. Gimme three minutes?”

“Then you have work after that.”

“Yeah.”

“What do librarians do, even?” This, at least, _must_ provoke a response.

Éponine clamps one book open in her hand while cross-referencing a critical passage about the same in the thick red volume that’s propped open on her knees. “Work in libraries,” she says. “Three minutes.”

* * * 

Cosette has figured out that if she keeps refilling the mug on the end table, eventually Éponine can’t help but make a bathroom run. Even Éponine has to take breaks sometimes. When she reenters Cosette’s living room, Cosette ambushes her with hot chocolate and a request:

“Can I practice my presentation real quick?”

“Kind of busy,” Éponine says, gesturing at the two open books and her scrawl-filled notebook on the green couch. 

“Five minutes!” Cosette cajoles. Either the sad face or the chocolate sways Éponine; she sits back down and tilts her head appraisingly in anticipation. 

Cosette tosses her hair so that the soft waves float back into position around her shoulders. The presentation really is only five minutes—maybe less—and Cosette’s a competent presenter. She’s been preparing her paper on the decomposition of this one really insidious neurotoxic pesticide in soil for weeks now, and is, if anything, overprepared for tomorrow’s table talk. She pulls up the title slide on her computer and is about to launch in when Éponine interrupts. She points at the screen with its polysyllabic pile-up of science words.

“I’m really not the target audience here, Fauche.”

“I promise it won’t be that bad.”

Éponine looks unconvinced.

“Just listen,” she says, and clicks into the first slide.

She’s not nervous exactly, but there’s something about standing in front of an audience presenting her own findings that always sends a little thrill through Cosette’s guts. Her voice deepens and gains a clipped, precise edge that underscores the cleanlined elegance of her slides. It’s a no-nonsense, no-frills exposition that relies on the purity of observation and logic and the perfect beauty of joining molecules.

She wraps up cleanly too. No smile, no pizzazz, just a few words on implications for future research and then a nod and a “Thank you.”

Then she breaks into a grin. “What did you think?”

Visibly surprised, Éponine says, “I got it.” She takes a long, slow sip from the mug in front of her. “I mean, the science could be fucked. But I got what you were saying.”

“The science is good,” Cosette assures her. 

“Fine, smartypants,” Éponine says, and the wry little smile’s back. “How’d I get such a smart girlfriend?”

“I _asked_ you.”

  


**Chapter 5: Éponine**

Éponine’s typing on the couch one evening with her feet in Cosette’s lap; on headphones, Cosette is re-listening to last week’s lecture about chemical bioaccumulation while comparing her notes from that class with her own research data. Finals start in a week. Éponine’s thesis is due in nine days. The common area is packed with studious Amis and friends. They’re not frantic yet, but there’s a palpable scurry in the air. 

Bossuet baked cookies for everyone yesterday, so today he’s dictating an essay while he elevates his burned, bandaged fingertips. Jehan, whose community college courses ended last week, glides through at intervals to set out bowls of almonds and grapes.

In the midst of this, Grantaire storms in the front door. The entrance is noisy enough to earn most of the eyes in the room. He’s disheveled and has paint on his shirt; a neglected paintbrush juts from behind his ear. 

“Hey folks,” he announces awkwardly, force of will carrying him through. “I think this is how we go public now?” Éponine nudges Cosette with her foot, because the goon’s so consumed by her own shit that she hasn’t noticed. Then she seeks out Enjolras. Last she saw, he was hunched over the kitchen counter with ‘Ferre and Courf, but since the disturbance he’s straightened up into ramrod-stiff leader pose, and his eyes on Grantaire tell the whole story. They’re wary, and hopeful, and disgustingly enraptured.

“Uh,” Grantaire flounders, and then he finds Enjolras too from across the room, and it’s like the sight buoys him. “Right. So, just so you know, Enjolras is fucking nuts, and despite my numerous attempts to dissuade him, apparently I’m his boyfriend. Suck it, haters.” And he whirls around and flies back out the door, letting it slam behind him.

Enjolras’s whole face is alight, but his voice is measured. “I’m reasonably sane,” he asserts, then checks himself. “Not that I mean to suggest that mental illness is _un_ reasonable. Just... I apologize, my mind is obviously elsewhere. Excuse me.” He strides across the room and follows Grantaire out into the night.

Beside her, headphones in hand, Cosette is goggling open-mouthed at the closed door.

“Did you have _any idea_?” Cosette demands.

Éponine shakes her head in amusement. “Cosette,” she says wryly, “ _darling_. I had every idea.”

Cosette’s look of indignant entitlement is hilarious. Éponine shrugs and returns to her typing so that she can suppress the grin she’d like to offer in return.

A moment later, Cosette leans over.

“Because you’re my girlfriend, _you know_ my real name’s not Cosette.”

“Right.” Éponine studies her face warily. It feels like something serious is being entrusted to her. “Because it’s really...?”

“Euphrasie.”

“God. What were your parents thinking?”

“Well, it’s just my dad. And I don’t know; he doesn’t really like to talk about when he adopted me. But he’s cool. You’ll meet him at graduation. Do I get to meet your fam?”

Éponine takes a breath. She doesn’t need to say this. She’s going to say it anyway. “ _As you know,_ my parents are in jail and my brother’s living on the streets.”

“Oh shit.” Cosette looks truly stricken. “I had no idea. Ép, I—”

Éponine waves the conversation off. This is not the way this game is played. “We’ve talked about it a million times,” she says. “Now, lemme finish this section, and then you can blow me.” 

  


**Chapter 6: Cosette**

Cosette would lick Éponine all day and all night if Éponine would stand for it. 

At first, it felt like sweet recompense for everything she’d taken from Éponine. Then, it just felt good. Tonight, it feels like adoration.

Beneath the thick black curls, Éponine’s _entrepierna_ is delicate, and each touch of Cosette’s tongue sparks tremors. When she’s getting close, Éponine stiffens and grabs at Cosette’s shoulders or her hair. And when she comes, she sometimes lets Cosette keep licking and sucking gently at her until she’s done it again—once several times, but usually just once or twice, and then Éponine pulls her up, kisses her, and grabs whatever book she’s reading and Cosette’s left with a briny taste on her tongue and the memory of Éponine’s voice growling her name.

*

“We should talk about when,” Cosette says bravely, running a firm hand down the bare length of her girlfriend’s leg where it emerges from the tangle of white sheets. “When it ends.” She set the terms of this relationship; it’s only fair that she make sure they’re upheld.

“After finals you said, right?”

“Can we wait?” 

“Till when?”

“I want to graduate with a girlfriend. I want you to meet my dad.”

“God.”

“So, after graduation?”

“There’s the Amis House dinner that night. You’re coming, right? It’d be kinda fucked to break up before that.”

“After the dinner?”

“Okay.” Éponine nods in slow contemplation. “We graduate. We have the dinner and the party. And then you go to your place and I stay here.”

“Clean break,” Cosette smiles. Is it wrong that she feels pride in Éponine, who is so scrupulous in her attention to detail? For the first time, she kisses her on the other tattoo—her first tacit acknowledgement that it’s even there.

This one’s a spindly young tree that grows upward from Éponine’s ankle, radiating a spiky halo of light like a Mexican Madonna.

“The poor thing,” Cosette says. "Someone needs to water it.”

Éponine gives a raspy chuckle. “Sometimes living’s enough,” she says.

*

Cosette picks Éponine up from her final shift at the library. The staff had a party for all the graduating seniors earlier that week, so the last shift is unceremonious; in fact, just before her shift ends, Éponine texts Cosette, _still shelving... come find me in Econ of Art_

It’s almost 10 at night, but there’s still a hearty bustle in the study carrels near the elevator bank. There’s almost no action in the stacks, though, and once she’s traversed the footbridge to the Arts Annex, it’s silent. Cosette navigates her way down the narrow aisles of grey metal shelving, peering down each till she sights a wheeled library cart topped with a small stack of books, and behind it, the slim figure of Éponine stretching to shelve a high volume. For a moment, Cosette just stands there and watches the spare, relentless lines of her body. For the last month, she has allowed this body to bring joy to her, to dominate her. Éponine’s is a wild, feral beauty. She did not know she’d ever sink below the prickly exterior.

Her plan has worked better than she ever could have hoped. Éponine no longer hates her. That much is clear. Maybe it’s even worked out to be a symbiosis. Cosette likes to tell herself that, Éponine’s protestations aside, they’ve _both_ found a new kind of resolve over the last four weeks. They will both be graduating in two days.

After four years of anticipation, Cosette had no idea that two days would feel like so little.

Walking forward, she lets her sneakers squeak on the floorboards. Éponine looks over, sudden and sharp, and then there’s that little smile.

“You found me.”

“Yeah, eventually. I can’t believe they’re making you shelve on the last day.”

Éponine shrugs. “I volunteered.”

“You hate shelving.” 

Éponine grins sharply, maybe because Cosette remembered this about her. And then, faster than Cosette can track it, she’s being shoved roughly up against the shelves, Éponine’s hand’s clamping over her mouth, and Éponine’s whispering in her ear while her other hand slides up the back of Cosette’s thigh, under her skirt, to cup her ass. Cosette takes a moment to give silent thanks that she’s wearing a thong, because the way Éponine squeezes her bare ass is a little bit magical.

Cosette moans into Éponine’s hand.

“Silence!” Éponine hisses. For all that Cosette’s made of smooth swimmer’s muscle, skinny Éponine overpowers her easily. Her rough voice jolts straight to Cosette’s groin. Cosette presses forward to rub against one of Éponine’s legs. Éponine pinches her ass hard enough that tears spring to Cosette’s eyes and her undies go miserably damp. “Stop that.”

Reaching down between them, Éponine rubs at the wet cloth of Cosette’s underwear. “This is exactly what you wanted, isn’t it, Fauche?” She nips at the neckline of Cosette’s t-shirt hard enough to pinch the skin below. Cosette squirms behind Éponine’s pitiless hand that pushes her head against the biting lines of the metal bookshelf. Éponine, as usual, gives no warning; having teased sufficiently, she tugs the scrap of cloth to the side and in the same motion shoves up into Cosette. Her hand’s curled so that it cradles Cosette’s pubis; with every lift of the fingers, the palm presses against Cosette’s clit. 

“Always so ready,” Éponine murmurs. “You’d take my fingers anywhere. I could fuck you onstage in a full lecture hall and you’d cover your eyes and blush and cry and love every fucking bit of it.” Her hand rocks harder and faster, and Cosette can’t help it, she’s licking and kissing at the hand over her mouth and Éponine clamps harder to prevent it, so Cosette’s mouth is useless, she can give nothing, all she can do is ride the beautiful curve of Éponine’s fingers and sob her frustrated joy. 

She can’t even see Éponine, who’s whispering vulgar rhapsodies in her ear. She stares through teary eyes at the brown and red spines of books arranged before her, and feels Éponine’s hard corners jutting against her almost as unyielding as the shelves at her back, and the softness inside her, and Éponine smells like lemons and the air smells like sex, like Cosette’s own sex, and Éponine nips harder at Cosette’s neck and Cosette comes.

It is spectacular. There are stars in her eyes and pain and pleasure intermingle as Éponine holds her body immobile and quiet while the sensations pulse through her. When Éponine finally releases her hold, Cosette has to catch the steel handle of the book cart to keep from sinking to the floor.

When Éponine was just an angry stranger to her, getting her vicious attentions felt like victory. Not anymore. She cared enough to remember this daydream fantasy Cosette once whispered in her ear, enough to stage this moment in the stacks. That would have been enough once. More than enough, even. More than Cosette proposed when she thought this whole ridiculous plan out in the first place.

Éponine adjusts her skirt for her, tugging it back into alignment, and then she lifts it for a second in the back. Sudden and sharp, Éponine’s flat hand cracks against Cosette’s bare ass, and now Cosette really is crying, because she likes this so much, so much more than she thought she would; she loves to have Éponine abuse her, to use her and toy with her, but god, this whole time, all she could think about was what it would be like to have Éponine’s mouth not whispering degradation but caressing her own. The slap stings. 

“Got what you wanted?” Éponine whispers, and Cosette can’t even find words to answer. She just nods. 

_I got what I_ wanted _. I didn’t get what I_ want _._

Victory doesn’t mean what it once did. Whatever this is now, it’s certainly not hate, but neither does it feel even remotely like the casual lovers’ game Cosette had envisioned. The endgame, Cosette realizes with some desperation, is changing.

Éponine parks the book cart with its mates, clocks out, and leaves the library hand-in-hand with her girlfriend.

  


**Chapter 7: Éponine**

“Fuck no, you’re not _actually_ dragging me to dinner with your dad.”

“Um, are you my girlfriend or what?”

Éponine mimes checking a watch. “For another what, 29 hours? I mean, why? You like your dad. Parents don’t like me. No reason to fuck around.”

Cosette finds steel in her voice. “You are my girlfriend, and you are meeting my dad.”

Later, watching Cosette change into a long, bright geometric-print dress and fuss with her makeup, Éponine feels a pang of some shocking desire to please. She demands, “Do you want me to get fancy and shit?” 

“No.” Cosette looks surprised. She eyes Éponine’s snug blue undershirt and black jeans, and Éponine’s not sure if it’s fact or wish that Cosette’s gaze lingers like she’d like to strip those clothes away. “I want you to be you.”

*

Cosette is stunning. 

When they get to Les Jardins, Cosette flies into the arms of the hulking, white-haired man loitering out front. He’s dressed plainly in a dark button-down and slacks; beside his subdued dignity, Cosette glows. 

“This is Éponine,” she says breathlessly, hauling Éponine in by the elbow. “My girlfriend.”

Mr. Fauchelevent appears to take no notice of Éponine’s scrappy appearance nor of the awkward way she’s shifting weight from one sneaker to the other. For just long enough that Éponine, who has been hearing regular installments lately from the depressingly detailed ongoing saga of Grantaire’s parents’ homophobia, starts to lock up, there appears to be something shrewdly critical in Cosette’s father’s gaze. Then, he takes her hand and smiles kindly.

“You make my daughter very happy,” he observes.

Éponine isn’t sure how to respond to this. Eventually she settles on, “Good,” and they all laugh.

*

Cosette loves her father very much. This is clear. It’s a friendly, warm affection that shows in her questions about his work, their neighbors, his plans for their upcoming summer together once she’s moved back home. Mr. Fauchelevent’s answers are direct and unadorned. Work is fine; the old woman next door is losing her hearing and he worries about her being home alone all day; he hopes that Cosette’s summer internship will leave time for them to take a week’s vacation to the Lost Coast.

He makes frequent attempts to draw Éponine into the conversation. She tells him about her thesis and is surprised at his real interest in the gendered language of patriotic obligation.

When Cosette excuses herself to the restroom, Éponine watches her depart, then turns back to the table to find Mr. Fauchelevent’s level gaze upon her.

“ _¿Me recuerdas?_ ” he asks. Gentle though they are, his eyes pinion her. “ _Hace muchos años..._ ”

He watches her and she looks at his sparkling eyes and something shakes loose in her memory. 

“A girl,” she says, starting to piece it together. “There was a girl.”

“ _La Alondra_ ,” he says. “A little girl who sang like a lark. Her mother had paid your parents to smuggle her to California. She planned to follow, but she was never able. So instead—”

“You came.” She remembers it now. A giant man— _could it really have been_ this _giant man?_ —striding in and confiscating the girl as easily as her teacher confiscated children’s illicit candy. _La Alondra_ had been too young to go to school, hadn’t she? Éponine hadn’t given her much thought—her mother had called the girl dirty and lazy, skinny, fleabitten, _fea_... and the girl had always been so busy with chores that she never had time to play. 

It had seemed terribly unjust when the man showed up, like a Herculean Santa, with toys beyond imagination for the scrawny, miserable work-girl who had never played a day in her life.

This man had saved that little girl, and Éponine had resented them both for it. Only now does the true injustice strike her.

“I was cruel to her,” Éponine confesses to Mr. Fauchelevent now.

“You were a child.”

“I was then,” she agrees. “I grew up fast.” After _La Alondra_ was gone, there were plenty of others like her—adults and some children, never so young as her, but equally exploited by her parents. _“After all the risks we take for these filthy_ criminales _,” her mother complained, “they could work like they’re a little grateful.”_ They cared for no one but themselves, and took what they liked from anyone close enough to control. “My parents are in jail now. They got caught.”

“I know,” he says, a flicker nudging at the lines in his cheek. “I cannot say that I am sorry.”

“Me either.”

He smiles now, and it is a bounty of compassion. “I must ask you, then, a favor. About _La Alondra_.”

“Me? I don’t know anything _about_ —” She cuts herself off. Impossible as it seems, it has to be right. “Oh.”

“Yes. Your family knew her as _La Alondra_ , but her mother called her Cosette. I adopted her. She knows this. But what she does not know is that at that same moment, we both adopted _Fauchelevent_. New identities, false papers. She does not know this.”

“What?” Éponine is horrified. With every second, more long-forgotten images flood her brain. That little girl sweeping and scrubbing, crying, neglected, ignorant. Little Éponine’s contempt. Her parents’ viciousness, and their glee at the money this man had flung at them when he took the girl away. That money, she realizes now, was what allowed them to build out the basement and expand into a full-fledged trafficking operation. It’s also why they finally got caught. All this history, and Cosette has no idea. “Then I’m definitely not who you should be telling this to.”

He nods as if registering her words, but keeps speaking. “I tried, very hard, to immigrate by legal means; I had money and some connections. But a criminal act of my youth haunted me. As a young man, I stole food for my family. That single blot on my history rendered me unfit for admission. So I spent much more money and came anyway. You see, I had made a promise.

“I have never wished to trouble Cosette with this. She seems to have forgotten the pain of her early years, and I see no point in reminding her.”

“Except,” Éponine breaks in, surprised at the level of fury boiling in her chest, “that sometimes it doesn’t matter what you think is best. Not when it’s about someone else. Not when it’s the _truth_ about who she is.”

“Who what is?” Cosette asks, appearing suddenly at Éponine’s elbow. Éponine realizes she’s heaved herself halfway across the table in her sudden rage. 

Crap. Éponine grasps for a thought and comes up with, “Uh. Um. Madame Bovary?”

Cosette rolls her eyes good-humoredly as she slips back into her seat. “I just don’t get how fictional stories get you so riled up. Gah.”

Her dad smiles weakly at the two women. “Your Éponine makes an excellent point. Personally, though, I have always preferred _The Awakening_.”

“Really?” Éponine asks, startled. She was not expecting that this would lead to actual book-talk. “You don’t think that Edna is a little too—”

“Enough!” Cosette breaks in. “No book fights! You want to hear a great joke about soils?”

Her dad laughs, as if his daughter herself is a joke in which he takes constant delight. “Only if it’s not dirty.”

Under the table, Éponine takes Cosette’s hand with an unfamiliar ferocity. Cosette looks both startled and turned-on by it, and Éponine can’t wait to get her home.

*

Éponine steps away from the table near the end of the meal to scrawl a quick note. 

_**Your daughter is a scientist**_ , she writes. _**Give her the facts. Let her decide what to do with them.**_

**_And if you’re asking if I’ll help her if things go bad—of course I will._ **

She stops and looks at the scrap of paper, stark white against the dark wood of the bar where she’s hiding out to write this. She shakes her head. It’s so fucking easy to pretend it’s real. She fooled all their friends. Cosette’s dad. And now she’s fooling herself with all this fantasy crap. _I’ll take her home. I’ll fuck her. I’ll save her from ICE. We’ll live happily ever after._

 ** __**Shit. Grappling with this revelation, Éponine glares down the bartender who has come over to inquire whether she’d like a drink: Cosette makes her _happy_.

But. “Clean break,” Cosette had said, smiling guilelessly like _that_ was easy. What a fucked-up thing that is to do to someone—to be the best fucking relationship they’ve ever had, and to put an end-date on it. 

There’s a little space left. Éponine fills it:

_**It doesn’t matter when, or if things have changed between us—I’m there. Say the word, and if she wants my help, I’m there.** _

She presses the note into Mr. Fauchelevent’s hand when they shake after dinner, and he gives her a small, sad smile and slides it into his coat pocket.

  


**Chapter 8: Cosette**

Graduation is good. After, there’s a celebratory dinner in Amis House, and for maybe the only time ever, there are no _Fuck the Police_ or _Get Your Filthy Laws Off My Uterus!_ banners strung across the common room walls and no one’s smoked weed in the house for literally days in anticipation of all the parents visiting.

Cosette’s dad is reserved but obviously full of pride at his daughter and her _Summa cum Laude_. He makes polite conversation with Enjolras’s mom, who is outlining a whole slew of issues that she hopes this generation will take on, and with Bahorel’s sweet parents.

Bossuet drags Grantaire’s folks out to the patio where he plies them with drinks and jocose conversation about traffic for long enough that Grantaire, who is looking particularly haggard, can pound a beer, speculate aloud for a minute about whether etiquette permits the uninviting of certain asshole guests before the dinner even begins, and throw together a couple gorgeous platters of hors d’oeuvres, which he plunks unceremoniously in front of hordes who fall upon them eagerly.

Cosette pops a cucumber chip topped with ahi poke and moans in delight. Musichetta elbows her in the ribs. “Fauche. Our _parents_ are here.” She winks and Cosette—never able to help herself—goes red.

Éponine chuckles and slides a hand around Cosette’s waist.

At almost every moment of the evening, Éponine has been at her side, or near enough that her head tips up the moment Cosette starts to look for her. 

They’ve had eons of time inside the blink of these last few days, since they’ve finished the papers and exams. Cosette half-expected Éponine to be a different person when she didn’t need to share her attention with an armload of books and a computer at every waking moment. But Éponine didn’t change. There was just, suddenly, _more_ of her. Cosette caught Éponine watching her more often, sometimes with a look like disbelief when Cosette met her gaze and smiled. 

It was enough to make Cosette wonder what might happen if, when the moment came, they _didn’t_ end it. She lolled lazily in Éponine’s bed and imagined surprise visits to Éponine in library school, late-night phone calls, moving in together when Éponine comes back to California, waking up like this every day.

But when she asked how long Éponine would be gone for school, Éponine said, “Program’s two years, but there’s nothing I want to remember about California.”

“You’re not coming back?” Cosette asked, dismayed.

“Why would I?” The question felt like a challenge. “I’m done with school, my friends are all moving, and I’m about to be single again. You got some reason I _shouldn’t_ move on?”

“You’re right,” Cosette said, trying to ignore the splintering in her chest as she nosed at Éponine’s neck, kissing it while she still could. She promised Éponine she’d end it cleanly. It wouldn’t be fair to ask for anything else. “You deserve better."

The graduation dinner goes smoothly enough. Everyone’s famished from the day, and there’s plenty of food—Courf and ‘Chetta have grilled a small mountain of poultry, and there are salads and casseroles and dumplings and enchiladas and rice three ways and lots and lots of beer.

After dinner, her dad steps out for a moment and returns bearing what is seriously the largest cake anyone has ever seen, and Cosette kisses her dad on the cheek. “It’s vegan,” he mentions as he serves the first slice to Éponine. Everyone gorges and makes merry. If there’s bickering somewhere underneath the uproar, Cosette doesn’t hear it.

No one looks more surprised than Enjolras when Enjolras shatters the merriment by punching Grantaire’s dad in the face. Mr. Grantaire’s winding up to hit back when Cosette’s dad, miraculously at his side in an instant, catches that arm in a gentle but authoritative grip and steers him toward the door. The whole way, Grantaire’s dad yells awful things. When he finally pauses for breath, Grantaire says, “Thanks, Dad, I’m real proud of you, too,” and drags Enjolras to the kitchen to pack his swelling hand in ice. 

By the time they come back out, the Grantaires have driven off and the parental dinner party’s breaking up.

When Éponine tries to shake hands with Cosette’s dad again, Cosette sees him consider a hug, but her father is a man who understands caution. He shakes the offered hand with gentle dignity, contenting himself with setting his other huge hand briefly on Éponine’s shoulder as he murmurs something Cosette cannot hear. Éponine brightens for a moment.

“Good,” she says, the hard knot of satisfaction in her voice audible from where Cosette stands.

“I give my word,” her father says. “Please, visit us soon.” Éponine looks down. 

“Mm-hm,” she mumbles. 

“You are always welcome,” he entreats. “We do not have a spare room, but then, I doubt you’d need it.” He smiles fondly at Cosette, who is approaching in case this gets weird, but who may well be too late. 

“Thanks, Mr. Fauchelevent,” Éponine says. 

“Sleep well, children,” he says, and kisses Cosette on the cheek before heading off to his economy hotel for the night.

Cosette feels, in the moment the door closes behind her father, a pendulum within her tug loose from its cord and crash to the floor. This is it. The moment’s come. She should leave. She should shake hands with her girlfriend, Éponine Thénardier, and she should look her in the eyes and say thanks for everything, it was great, _felicitaciones y buena suerte_ , and she should march home to her own packed-up bedroom and collapse into the liberating sleep of a person released from orbit.

Éponine is still standing by the door.

“Éponine,” Cosette begins, and Éponine’s eyes catch hers and they are black and troubled and so beautiful that without meaning to, Cosette has reached not to her hand but to her face. In the quiet babble of a dozen other conversations and string music through the speakers, Cosette cradles Éponine’s cheek and wishes for time. 

Éponine clears her throat. 

Cosette contemplates fleeing before she has to hear whatever it is Éponine’s going to say.

Mid-crescendo, the music lurches from Stravinsky to Missy Elliott. The parents are gone, and suddenly, this party’s booming. Holding a bottle of tequila in each hand, Courfeyrac leaps off the kitchen bar, lands with a surprising degree of grace in the middle of the room, and yells, “GRADUATION SHOTS!”

With whoops and cheers, the others flock to him. They grumble and laugh and accept miscellaneous glasswares from Jehan and Grantaire. Cosette gazes over longingly. She doesn’t love shots, but she will drink just about anything if it means a few more minutes before they part—a few more minutes with Éponine.

Éponine, too, is watching the commotion. Cosette’s conscience chides her. They should leave now. They should step out to the quiet of the front porch and get this over with. Dragging it out will just make it worse.

“C’mon, girlfriend,” Éponine says, tilting her head toward the crowd. “What, you chicken?”

Combeferre is carefully pouring each of the graduates a precise 50 ml of tequila; Enjolras, clearly conscripted to the job, makes the rounds awkwardly offering a salt-cellar and a bowl of cut limes while also clutching at his own shot.

Handed a shot in a chipped demitasse, Cosette helps herself to a fat pinch of salt and a lime. Éponine takes neither garnish, but orders ‘Ferre to fill the dolphin-printed double shot glass he’s given her to the top.

Finally satisfied with his friends’ readiness, Courfeyrac raises his glass—shaped like a tiny boot, a souvenir from last year’s Southwest Spring Break. “It’s been a long and arduous four years,” he begins with pompous solemnity. “Lessons have been learned, friendships have been texted—I mean to say tested—no, I’m sorry, I mean to say _sexted_ , battles have been won, romances have been courted, burly waves have been ridden, lovers have been really deeply, richly fucked, and we find ourselves here. Today. At a crossroads of our lives, at an ending and, dare I say, a _beginning_. Tomorrow, a new day dawns, and—fuck, ‘Ferre, where am I going here?”

Combeferre shakes his head in amusement. “I believe that you mean to congratulate us on our accomplishments. Many of us have lost ourselves in study and ideology more times than we can count these last few years, and our path back to humanity has always been through each other.” He lifts his glass a little higher. “May we continue to surround ourselves with friends who guide us true.”

Enjolras claps a hand on his shoulder. “But as we go, as we leave this place and each other, we must not lose sight of the fortune that we have enjoyed in our educations. People have fought and died for access to a fraction of the knowledge we’ve had available at our whim the last four years. If you remember nothing else of our time in Amis House, remember, at least, that it is not enough to hold knowledge. You must share it. You must transform and strengthen and disseminate it. It is your solemn and venerable duty to—” 

“—to _drink_ ,” Grantaire finishes for him, waggling the bottle in his hand, “before this shit gets warm. At twelve bucks a bottle, it’s not getting any better.” He winks at Enjolras, and Enjolras is remarkably devoid of annoyance. In fact, he may even be smiling. “We’re fucking done, peeps. To us!”

“To us!” they chorus, miscellaneous glasswares clinking, and Cosette’s taste buds shrivel at the assault of salt and liquor and acid and she winces and shudders. Beside her, Éponine’s downed hers with impassive calm.

“Babe,” Cosette says. “If you’re gonna be so good at it, you need some _showmanship_. That was just... I give it a two.”

Éponine chuckles, and her eyes are still inscrutably dark, but they’re fixed on Cosette. She holds out her empty glass for another pour.

“Hey fucker,” she says to Grantaire, who is helping himself to another swig from his bottle while Enjolras looks on in affectionate consternation. “Gimme a lime. And you’re in this too.”

Cosette isn’t quite sure where this is going until Éponine’s crushing the hard slice of citrus till it oozes. She lowers the glistening fruit to Cosette’s collarbone and rubs it there in one long swipe that descends almost into the low neck of her dress. A drop of lime juice rolls under, along the contour of her breast. Cosette shivers.

Éponine reaches for the end table behind her, and her hand returns bearing a pinch of salt between the flat pads of her thumb and forefinger. She smooths the coarse salt into the wash of lime juice on Cosette’s chest. Cosette is barely breathing. 

Behind Éponine, Enjolras, having wrested away the bottle, is apparently giving a similar treatment to Grantaire, and Musichetta’s smiling coyly at her boyfriends through salt-encrusted lips. Cosette notices this like you notice other people’s emotions on a roller coaster. They exist, but only in the extreme periphery. 

There’s a vague din of cheersing and three or four clinking glasses, and then Éponine wraps one long arm around her back, drags her close, and lowers her tongue to Cosette. 

“Fuck,” Cosette whispers. This made-up memory, too, Éponine remembered. In one long, sure movement, Éponine’s tongue traverses her chest up to the throat. Cosette barely has time to lament the absence of a kiss when Éponine pulls away to tilt back the full shot glass and Cosette sees that everyone’s watching her—even Grantaire, who peers around Enjolras while Enjolras sucks at the side of his neck. Éponine’s head comes back to level. Cosette sees the flicker of reaction to the alcohol, and then Éponine’s face is hard again, and Cosette will not have that. Not now. Not in their final minutes together.

She licks her lips, hoping Éponine will notice. Éponine notices. Her eyes tighten. Her lips. Cosette wants to say, _Kiss me_ ; she wants to say _I’m yours_ ; she wants to say, _Show them_. What comes out is the horrible opposite. “I think it’s time.”

Then Éponine grabs her, ferocious and swift, and kisses her till her lips are mush and her head buzzes.

She melts into Éponine when she pulls away. 

“Excuse us,” Éponine says gruffly, stepping firmly back, and leads Cosette outside.

*

“All right, Fauche,” Éponine says once they’ve walked a few houses down. It’s a warm night and Éponine stands in cuffed sleeves in the middle of the deserted street. “Let’s do this.”

 _I’m not ready_ , Cosette thinks. Have Éponine’s gangly limbs always looked so precarious, like those stick-dolls that collapse when you press the button underneath? Cosette used to find her intimidating. How can this be?

“Thank you,” Cosette says, and tries very hard for a mix of earnest and light. “It’s been great.” She digs deep and summons some kind of painted smile.

Éponine scowls and takes a step back. “Yeah, sure, it’s been awesome running this con with you.”

“That’s a little harsh,” Cosette says, and the plastered-on smile is realer now, sweeter. 

“I’m just saying, let’s call the lie a lie.” 

She can split hairs with Éponine all day. “I’d say we brought some significant truths to light.”

“Like the _truth_ where we were girlfriends?” Éponine spits out. Her face is rawer than usual, liquor giving her a bare and strange aspect above the collared shirt and tie she wore for today’s festivities. 

“Why not call it true?” Much as this hurts, Cosette is practically grinning. She loves to see Éponine worked-up like this. The ferocity, the righteousness. She could kiss her now. Once more, one last time, she really should kiss her.

“If you were _really_ my girlfriend,” Éponine says, alone at the center of an invisible circle in which she’s circumscribed herself, lean and rigid against the surrounding dark, “I’d’ve fucked you like I like you.”

“Oh.” The flirtiness falls away from Cosette’s face like sunlight before a thunderhead. It’s not the playful pout that Cosette uses so skilfully; this, she knows, is a thin, almost transparent, veil of dejection. Éponine will see through it, and that’s not fair—she promised _this would be easy_ —so she turns away. This is it. There’s not going to be a last kiss. This was already more than it was supposed to be. “Right.” _I thought you did._ “Well, _I_ thought it was great anyway.” It’s time. If nothing else, the welling-up in her eyes should tell her. _Walk away, Cosette._ “I hope you find someone who makes you happy.”

Like most of the buildings on the block, Amis House, just ahead of her, bursts with light and sound. It’s a night of celebration. Cosette steps numbly forward.

“Euphrasie Fauchelevent.”

Cosette did not realize that every part of her was spring-loaded with readiness to turn back. It’s hard to keep from whirling. Éponine is standing there in the middle of the road with her arms barred across her chest and a forbidding expression, but her voice sounded so... unusual, so nearly _hopeful_ , that Cosette’s heart bounds. A tear runs down the side of her nose and Cosette wipes it away and feels ashamed at the depths of her own need and hopefulness.

Éponine’s mouth twitches. _I know,_ Cosette tells herself, _that’s a smile._

Éponine holds out a hand. “You don’t leave till tomorrow. Where the fuck do you think you’re even going?” 

*

Éponine’s room is an uncharacteristic mess, with a maze of half-packed boxes on the floor and teetering stacks of books on all horizontal surfaces. Éponine shoves a heap of books off the bed and flings herself and Cosette down in its place.

“Give me a kiss,” Éponine demands, and Cosette’s already doing it, Éponine’s face between her hands. Cosette’s lips burnish every part they can. 

Everything’s a kiss—mouths on mouths, on fingers, on legs, between them, on nipples and ribs and soft curves and hard bones. Music from the party below pulses through the floorboards and vibrates in the bedframe. The moments feel weighty and weightless, at once each an unexpected gift and each already consumed.

Cosette wails into Éponine’s mouth as she comes, and Éponine is riding Cosette’s leg—so odd and wonderful, for Éponine to give in this once to the easy desire, but to account for it there’s the drinking and the finality and the really inconsiderately loud sounds Cosette can’t stop herself from making, and over all, the intoxicating charge in the air of Amis House.

Woven in with the music, there are other sounds: through the ceiling, they can hear Joly whimper, and Bossuet and Musichetta laugh; down the hall, Courfeyrac’s latest is crying out agonies of bliss; a distant thudding may well be Enjolras and Grantaire. They’ll all be moving out this week. The house might as well shake itself to bits. No one else will ever love it as much as these people have.

Scrambling to regain control of her faculties, Cosette grasps Éponine’s ass so that she can drag her forward over the smooth length of her thigh. Once, twice—and her muscles are taut, and Éponine is kissing her and breathing fast and rough—and on the third, Cosette brings one hand up into Éponine’s hair and just holds her so that she can gaze into Éponine’s eyes as she goes still and joyous.

They are dark and warm and they look both at Cosette and through her. Cosette cannot look at this any longer. She pulls Éponine down to her. With Éponine’s face nestled cheek-to-cheek with her own, Cosette can allow herself the indulgence of tears.

But then Éponine, having revived, pushes up a little. Cosette blinks hard to hide the wetness, but it may be too little too late; Éponine kisses her teary lids, her nose, her chin.

“I don’t get it,” Éponine’s musky voice breathes into her mouth.

“What?” Cosette asks, distracted by the way the thin line of streetlight through the window illuminates the acute angles of Éponine’s zygomatic bones.

“You broke up with Marius ... why?””

It’s the first time Éponine’s ever said his name to her. “I think you know.”

The lines go sharper. “He bossed you around.”

Cosette nods slowly. She had let him. She had let him get away with thinking she belonged to him, that her heart and mind and virtue were purely his. 

Éponine goes on. “But then ... with me, you wanted...” The question hangs unasked in the sliver of space between them.

Never, before tonight, have they had sex like equals. Éponine has ordered her, teased her, derided her, chided her, pinched and poked and choked and used her. She’s always given Éponine the illusion of control, but that’s... “‘Cause I _like_ it. ‘Cause you never take anything I haven’t offered. ‘Cause it feels good to _pretend_ I belong to someone when we both know I don’t. It was the nicest thing you could do for me—to let me let go. To not have to control everything for a minute.” She lets her soft and kiss-swollen lips brush across Éponine’s jaw. “Marius couldn’t see the line.”

There’s a long pause, then Éponine asks, so quietly that it’s almost just a rasp in the darkness, “Did you have him use you like I did?”

“No,” Cosette murmurs into the spot she loves best, behind Éponine’s ear. “We just had plain old sex. I wouldn’t have stood for it from him.” The first time Éponine could have fucked her, she had crossed her arms over her chest and _watched_ instead. Cosette thrills to recall the vulnerability, the shame, the intimacy of that moment. Éponine had forced her to choose how much of herself she was going to give. It wasn’t just her body. It had never been just her body. It was her brain controlling her body, her brain impelling her forward, her brain requiring of herself ridiculous ignominies—her brain making a gift of her pathetic willingness to bare herself to Éponine. She could not have been so open with Marius. He would have plunged into that openness like it was his to claim, not hers to bestow. “There’s a difference.”

She didn’t mean to say this last thing out loud. Or maybe she did. It doesn’t really matter. Éponine’s leg is pushing down between hers into the firm mattress of the futon, and she is going to let her brain take back seat for a while; her body deserves a chance to drive itself. 

*

When you fall asleep late enough, sometimes it’s easy to wake up early. You trick your body into thinking it’s a catnap, and you’re up again soon enough to examine this room for a final time, to wallow in the last moments of its denuded walls and high-piled boxes. You get to feel at least a small and vicious gratitude that no one else will ever sleep here with her. Probably. She’ll be here one last night before the move east to library school.

Surely she won’t bring someone home tonight. Will she?

Everything is Éponine. Her choppy black hair across the pillow. Her knobby hand, clutched in an involuntary fist over her heart. Her breath, which smells vaguely of booze and of toothpaste, but mostly of Cosette.

Cosette turns the alarm off before it sounds. She kisses Éponine awake instead. She’s stretched it as long as she can—there are mere minutes before she needs to go meet her dad to pack her belongings on the truck, kiss a sleepy Flor and Lety goodbye, and leave with him on the long drive north. 

  


**Chapter 9: Éponine**

Compared to waking to her screechy alarm clock, waking up to the sweet delight of Cosette’s lips is a paradise. Hell, it’s a paradise anyway. Only, her time here can’t last. 

Cosette’s rising. She is so quiet this morning, so unusually quiet. She faces away. She has been crying. Éponine can’t see or hear it, but she knows.

“Don’t walk me out, okay?” Cosette says while she dresses in fresh jeans and a swim-team t. She wore a dress last night, Éponine recalls, and gloats inside at the knowledge that, despite their arrangement, Cosette came over hoping to stay. 

Éponine, who is still stretched naked and warm in her bed, nods.

Cosette sinks to her knees onto the bed beside Éponine. “I guess this is it?” She sounds like she’s trying very hard not to cry again.

“I guess so,” Éponine says, and she will definitely not cry, because for once, she holds the winning card. 

When Cosette kisses her goodbye, though, not on the mouth, nor the cheek, but on the scorpion, Éponine feels a deep distress prickle at her nose, eyes, and chest.

  


**Chapter 10: Cosette**

Cosette’s dad is an imperturbable driver, always happy to let her choose the music or conversation or silence. He drives with a deep calm whether in bumper-to-bumper traffic or cruising at 70, but he never exceeds the speed limit and always makes sure his signals and taillights are in good working order.

For the drive north, Cosette connects her phone to the rental truck’s speakers, puts her music on shuffle, and closes her eyes. She doesn’t want to think about leaving. She doesn’t want to think about Éponine. She doesn’t want to think about what came before or what comes next; she just wants to watch the miles creep by outside the window and feel the hot air whip in the windows and assault her face.

She’s glad her father delayed the celebration at home until the weekend; by then, she hopes she’ll be ready to face her friends from high school, her neighbors, her new life. He seems particularly introspective beside her, but makes no attempt to converse. He has told Cosette that he has a gift and an important conversation waiting for her at home tonight. Maybe he’s moving again. Maybe he wants her to start paying rent. Maybe he’s finally found love? It’s not worth speculating. Her father lets out nothing till he’s ready. If it were urgent, he’d say so.

She dozes lightly, jolting awake at a gas station stop, and again when her father brakes sharply for a tomato truck that’s shifting lanes.

After hours of this—the ocean and mountains and brown scrubby hillsides, and the mixed hits of her last four years, the music quiets for a moment to make room for the trill of an incoming text.

Her roomies must be finally waking up and recognizing her absence.

Cosette looks at her father, who smiles back at her without diverting his eyes from the road.

The text is not from Floréal nor Lety, nor any of the other likely parties. It’s from Éponine.

Cosette’s thumb is remarkably steady as she unlocks her phone. There are two messages.

_btw, Fauche, I believe I was a lil bit in love with you_

_have a good life, ex_

Cosette bursts into laughter so abrupt that her dad swerves. 

“Sorry!” she exclaims, drumming excitedly against the glove box. “Everything’s okay. I was just surprised.”

“Good news, then?”

“Great news.” The barren hillsides shimmer below the midday sun. In her hand, the phone is disconcertingly cool for a device that has potentially just changed the entire course of her life. “Hey, do you happen to know what’s the closest airport to Lamarque University?”

Her father smiles, a sweet, sad smile. “I’m afraid I have no idea.”

“No worries.” Thank god for smartphones. She’ll have plane tickets booked before she even gets home, but that’s still hours away. For now, she beams at her phone and sends a reply.

_**You can be my ex when you’re fucking dead** _

**_I love you too_ **


End file.
